


tell me what it's like (to be loved by you)

by i_kinda_like_writing



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Anxiety, Best Friends, Car Accidents, Domestic Fluff, Drunk Sex, First Time, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Future Fic, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Kid Fic, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mutual Pining, Pining, Roommates, Sex, Slow Burn, Time Skips, but not really, in like the most depressing version of that statement, just tagging in case, post-Samwell, story-telling wise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-29 05:54:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20077231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_kinda_like_writing/pseuds/i_kinda_like_writing
Summary: Four years after graduating from Samwell, Nursey can honestly say he loves his life.He just finished his third novel. He eats like a somewhat responsible adult. He lives in a small two-bedroom apartment with his best friend, who cooks them fancy Instagram recipes for dinner and binges new Netflix series with Nursey on the couch and knows how to deal with the anxious voice in Nursey's head better than anyone (especially Nursey).And yeah, Nursey is kind of totally in love with Dex, has been for going on five years thereabouts, and all of Nursey's friends and family are adamant that the feelings are reciprocated and Nursey should justgo for it, but, well. He and Dex have a good thing going, and maybe something romantic could be good, too, but the prospect of ruining what they have is terrifying enough for Nursey to let things just stay the same.Then there's a car accident, a transfer of guardianship, and a little baby girl with the widest smile Nursey has ever seen, and the change becomes inevitable.





	tell me what it's like (to be loved by you)

**Author's Note:**

> Helloo! It's been a while since I finished/posted a longer fic and this one has been in the workings for a while now! I wrote the first scene like a year ago and picked it back up when I got back from college for the summer and it really got me back in the writing groove. And I'm very happy with how it's turned out, so I hope you enjoy it too!  
This was finished with the help of [rhysiana](https://rhysiana.tumblr.com/) and [tjc2009-2018](https://tjc2009-2018.tumblr.com/) , who lovingly betaed for me and were infinitely helpful!!  
** Warnings ** for this fic include dealing with anxiety, dealing with grief, a minor (non-explicit) mention of homophobic parents, somewhat drunken sex, and a brief bit about parents not understanding mental illness.  
In a similar vein, there is a sex scene, but it's more metaphors than dicks. Sorry not sorry?  
Nursey's Mama speaks Spanish in this fic and when she does, I will embed the English translation in the text so you can hover over it if you want to know what she's saying. It's not really necessary to understanding/enjoying the fic, but it's fun.  
Title is from Cherry Street by The Icarus Account because it was in my Spotify playlist while I was writing this and I thought I would just say fuck it and totally be That Bitch in the title. oops  
All that having been said, it is mostly a very fun fic, with the healthy dose of angst and slowburn characteristic of my long fics, and I hope y'all will enjoy it!

_A little before today_

There was a time when Nursey couldn’t wake up quickly to save his life. Mom would poke and prod, whisper sweet good mornings and reminders of the day to come, and Nursey would turn away and bury his head in the soft comfort of his warm pillow. Next Mama would try, though her methods tended towards mild threats. Even then, with the prospect of cold water dumped over his head or missing out on the savory-smelling breakfast in the kitchen, Nursey would only burrow further. Finally, Dad would enter the room, pick Nursey up—blankets and all—and carry him down to the dining table. There, wrapped in his comforter and listing to the side, Nursey would drowsily eat his breakfast and wake up only after the last bite had been swallowed.

Who would have thought that the only thing he needed to wake up immediately was the sound of crying?

This morning, like most mornings, Nursey wakes up before the sun to the sound of sobs and whimpers from the next room. He stands up before he consciously tells his body to do so and is halfway to Dex’s room just as the crying softens. Nursey pauses in the doorway, feet stuttering where the hardwood gives way to carpet. The door is open, the light on. Nursey blinks the sleep from his eyes.

Dex stands stark against the shadowy room, pale skin bare and reflecting the yellow lamplight. He wears no shirt or socks, sweatpants stretched low across his waist. A few months ago, Nursey would’ve been struck dumb from the sight of it, so tender and beautiful and honest. But by now he has accustomed himself to the tightness in his chest, has learned to push forward despite his thundering heart. He has a job to do, of course.

“Let me take her,” Nursey says, scratchy, hands already outstretched. “You’ve been up all night.”

Dex turns his head, eyes smudged with bruises, his large hand cradling Ellie’s head so softly. Nursey steps forward and Dex doesn’t hesitate to hand her over. Ellie cries louder, momentarily, at the change, and then presses her red face into Nursey’s neck and soothes herself with the warmth of his skin. Her little fists clench and unclench on his shoulders, feet kicking ineffectually at his ribs until she finds a comfortable position and settles.

Nursey bounces them slightly and mumbles into her baby-soft hair. “S’alright, baby girl, let it out, you’re alright.” Dex stares on for a handful of unblinking moments before tumbling onto the bed beside him, body collapsing under the exhaustion. As Ellie settles further, Nursey joins him. “You should sleep,” he tells Dex, eyes catching on the clock. “You have to be up in a few hours.”

“I…” Dex swallows his words and does not continue. His cheek crushes against the comforter, body slumped sideways on the bed. He doesn’t appear to even have the energy to reach the pillow. Nursey slides closer and lifts Dex’s head onto his thigh, feels both fluttery and overwhelmingly sad when Dex does not protest a bit.

“Sleep.” Nursey pets at the side of Dex’s head, his too-long hair, his ear. Dex closes his eyes and begins to drift off and Ellie, still curled in the crook of Nursey’s arm, does the same.

It is at times like this that Nursey’s instant alertness feels unbearably strange. Surrounded by warm, sleeping bodies, ought his own not crave rest too? It does not. His hips ache, thigh beginning to deaden under Dex’s increasingly heavy head. His shoulders, his bicep, tense with holding Ellie’s small weight. The pain, though, is merely attentiveness, his body committing itself to this momentous task. He must stay awake now. He must hold these two close, he must watch over them in their vulnerability. _What would happen_, his body shudders, _if he wasn’t here?_

The anxiety is not unfamiliar—he’s had it all his life—but never before has it consumed him as it does now.

*~*~*

_About two months before today_

The night Dex got the call had, previously, been a good one.

Nursey’s third novel had passed its first stage in the editing process and Dex had picked up some chocolate cake from Nursey’s favorite bakery in the city to celebrate. They ate it sitting on the rug in the living room, smearing icing on errant noses and laughing around sips of champagne.

“I don’t think we’re fancy enough for champagne,” Dex said, warily watching Nursey pour out two glasses.

“We’re not too fancy to get drunk,” Nursey responded, and Dex shrugged and downed the first glass with little hesitation. Nursey remembers how bubbles clung to his bottom lip. He’d almost leaned forward to lick them off.

It must have only been a few hours later that Dex’s mother called from Maine, but looking back it’s hard for Nursey to connect the two events. The celebration, sweet and bubbly, couldn’t have turned into that sleepless wide-awake drive to Dex’s hometown, Dex’s foot bouncing relentlessly against the dashboard, Nursey gripping the steering wheel tight enough to ache.

Dex wore the same directionless, empty expression the whole ride. Intermittently he would read out the updates from his phone.

“Ma’s at the hospital,” Dex said, as they crossed the bridge. “Jay’s going into surgery,” he read, dully, as they merged onto the highway. A minute later, “Kelsey was in the car, too.”

Nursey flexed his hands on the wheel, foot stuttering on the brake pedal. He’d only met Dex’s sister-in-law a few times. Once at Dex’s 22nd birthday along with the rest of Dex’s family, once again at the aftermath of a New York City bachelorette party when she was more hungover than amiable. Again, at the wedding, when Nursey filled the plus-one and no one from the Poindexter clan quite knew what to do with him.

It had been a long night, that wedding. The ceremony was easy, as far as things went. Dex smiled at his brother, appearing genuinely happy for him. It made Nursey remember all the loud phone calls followed by hours of silence, the quotes and bits of wisdom Dex had dropped over the years, all attributed to his brother. Maybe it was because Nursey didn’t have siblings, but he never quite got Dex and Jay’s relationship. Even still, seeing Dex so plainly happy was a treat Nursey didn’t question.

After the ceremony, Nursey did his best to distract—his main purpose of being there, really. He teased Dex through the photoshoots until his ears turned red enough to scald, spent most of the reception trying to get Dex to dance with him using increasingly ridiculous moves—instead ending up waltzing with an arrangement of little ginger cousins. After the cake was cut and the last of the ceremonial bits of the night had commenced, Dex fidgeted on the edge of the party, in shifts making eye contact with and glancing away from his relatives. Nursey, noticing this, grabbed a bottle of champagne and two pieces of cake and dragged Dex further down the beach, feet bare and cold in the sand.

They ended up sitting on a patch of beach, leaning heavily into one another, Dex because he needed it and Nursey because—well. Since they’d gotten to Maine, Dex had kept his distance in all kinds of ways, and Nursey had missed him, stupidly.

“You good?” Nursey remembers asking, tipsy on the party fumes and champagne and the fact that Dex was sharing the bottle. Mouth on glass lip, raised to mouth—practically kissing, it was so close.

“I don’t know,” Dex said, which was as honest as he’d been all that week, and Nursey pressed further into Dex’s shoulder.

“I got you,” he said, mumbled, and though he wasn’t sure if it made sense, Dex pressed back, quiet.

“What’re you two losers doing?” Jay’s laughing voice came after a while. “Party’s down there, nerds.” Nursey glared, inhibitions lowered and all. Jay’s grin didn’t dim, though his eyes maybe stopped reflecting the stars, momentarily. “Some of the—some people’ve left,” he said. “Might be—friendlier, or whatever.”

“Thanks, Jay,” Dex said, staring at the water. Jay nodded, raised his glass of something in toast. He stumbled away and Nursey liked him, a bit more, after that. It took them a few minutes to follow him back to the party, but once they did Nursey saw that Jay hadn’t lied—the herd had thinned a bit. He and Dex made their way unobtrusively back to their table, but Kelsey caught them on their way.

She laughed, seeing their empty bottle and nearly cleaned plates. “Did you two go off and have your own little party?” She shook her head, strands of hair that had escaped her elegant up-do shaking with the movement. “Of course you did,” she said, pressed a glossy kiss to Dex’s cheek and added, just loud enough for Nursey to make out, “Thank you for being here, babe. It means a lot.”

Nursey watched as Dex’s shoulders settled, marginally but noticeable. Knew, then, what the issue had been, recognized the kind of calm that only comes with being assured of your own belonging. He marveled, tipsy, awed, at how the woman who’d thrown up in his kitchen sink and then asked if there were any pancakes with a _Bride-to-Be_ sash tied around her head like a bandana managed to soothe Dex’s ache with only a handful of words.

Without further comment, Kelsey then hiked up the skirt of her dress and marched onto the dancefloor to flail wildly at the techno-country song blaring over the speakers.

Dex turned to Nursey with a small smile. “Wanna dance?” Nursey laughed, surprised, and pulled Dex onto the dancefloor, sharing a coincidental glance with Kelsey, who winked, grinning wide enough to ache.

“She died on impact,” Dex said, the night of the call, as they passed the _Welcome to Connecticut!_ sign.

Nursey swallowed, throat scratchy, and took a slow breath through his nose.

The updates came sporadically after that. Dex’s parents didn’t seem to be hearing much from the doctors, which could have been a good thing. The alternative was not mentioned. The drive went quicker, less people on the road in the middle of the night, and desperation fueling each mile. By the time they reached the hospital, the sun was peeking over the horizon and the minutes came too slow.

The memories Nursey had of the hours, days following their arrival were mostly fragmented, based more in sensation than fact. Slapping footsteps on linoleum as they raced down the hospital halls. A heavy, warm weight as Dex collapsed into Nursey, trusting him to hold them both up. The signing of will papers, guardian papers. Shaking sweaty hands of people who didn’t look at Dex at Jay’s wedding and proffered empty apologies at his feet at Jay’s funeral.

The only secure memories Nursey had of that week were of Ellie.

Nursey hadn’t met many babies in his life, but he was sure that Ellie was his favorite ever. She was sweet like chocolate cake, bubbly like champagne, and just as intoxicating in her loveliness. Big bright eyes, just like Dex’s, with thin orange hair and pale eyelashes, tiny grabbing fingers and this intrinsic curiosity that made Nursey fall in love from the first moment she was placed in his arms.

That was what Nursey did, during the week after the accident. He watched Ellie, fed her, changed her, while Dex and his parents moved mechanically through the post-mortem process. Dex’s parents couldn’t look at Ellie without their eyes welling, wet, but Dex seemed to find solace in her, and so Nursey trailed him with Ellie in his arms whenever he could. They all slept in Dex’s childhood room, Nursey and Dex sharing the bed and Ellie in a crib. Most nights that week, though, they all fell asleep in the bed together, Nursey awake and watching over the two of them.

That was likely when the anxiety had started, but Nursey hadn’t realized then what it was.

*~*~*

_Today, proper_

In the morning—the true morning—Dex makes breakfast as he always does while Nursey feeds Ellie at the table.

“I’ll be back around noon,” Dex says, as he scrapes eggs from the pan. “I can’t stay too long but I’ll bring lunch.”

Nursey hums and tickles Ellie’s stomach so she shrieks a giggle. He glances sideways to watch how the sound eases the line of Dex’s shoulders. “The sweet potatoes went over well last time.”

“For you or for her?” Dex asks, the inflection of a chirp in his voice as he turns towards the table with full plates in his hands. Nursey grins, unbidden, before schooling his expression into something deliberately unaware.

“I have no idea what you mean.” He sniffs, haughty, to exaggerate the effect, and Dex snorts, shaking his head. He sits at the table, pushing one plate towards Nursey, who begins eating eagerly now that Ellie is all but done with her applesauce.

“Thank you,” Dex says, between bites, after a few minutes of silence. “For last night.”

Nursey waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No, I—” Dex stops, jaw tensing and releasing. “I wouldn’t—I don’t know how I’d—” He shakes his head. “Thank you.”

Nursey swallows awkwardly around some eggs. Dex won’t look at him but he finds he can’t look away from the stubborn line of Dex’s eyebrows, wrinkled and firm, the downturned corners of his mouth. He used to be so afraid to stare at Dex for too long, worried it would be too obvious, too honest.

“It’s a little early for real emotions, Dexy-do,” Nursey says, too quiet for it to work right but Dex glances up, lips twitching. Nursey smiles back, shaky, before they both look away.

Ellie breaks the silence with some baby chatter, to which Nursey obviously has to respond. Their conversations usually go something like this—Ellie babbles indistinctly and Nursey pretends as if he understands, responding with actual words, and back and forth they go until Ellie sticks food or a foot in her mouth to end the conversation. Nursey thinks it’s good for her linguistic development. Dex thinks it’s ridiculous.

Nursey becomes so entranced in their conversation that he only notices Dex has left the table when his plate clatters into the sink. “I’ll get the dishes,” he says, as Dex runs the faucet. “You should go or you’re going to be late.”

Dex listens, though begrudgingly, and goes off to get his bag. Nursey swiftly cleans up the breakfast table and lets the dishes soak before scooping up Ellie from her highchair. “Let’s go wish Uncle Dex a good day at work, yeah?” He blows a raspberry on her cheek, which makes her squeal and squirm, delighted.

Dex is waiting at the front door for them and Nursey’s chest does a funny swoopy thing he’s unfortunately become accustomed to since Ellie came to stay with them. “Goodbye, Ellie-girl,” Dex murmurs, voice sweetened. He presses a kiss to her cheek and, when she grabs onto his chin and refuses to let him go, he laughs and presses another kiss to her nose.

Nursey is the one to untangle Ellie’s baby fingers from Dex’s jaw, knowing both that Dex will never do it himself and that if he doesn’t leave within the minute he’ll be late for work. “Say ‘bye-bye, Uncle Dex’,” Nursey says, waving Ellie’s newly freed hand in a wave.

Dex smiles, the eye-crinkling kind, and turns to leave just as Ellie says, high-pitched and unaware, “Bye!”

Nursey and Dex both freeze on the doorstep.

“Did she—?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh my god.”

Their eyes meet, dragging away from Ellie who is visibly both pleased and confused. The awe and excitement and _joy_ are unrestrained in Dex’s eyes and Nursey wonders, momentarily, at what his own face is doing before Dex’s expression breaks into a grin.

“She said her first word. She said her _first __word_. She isn’t supposed to do that for another month!”

“I know! I know, she’s brilliant, god, Dex, we have a genius baby—!”

And the thing is, they’re both grinning, both laughing in the breathless, incredulous, _wonderful_ way they haven’t been able to in months, and Ellie is bouncing between them, feeling their joy even if she doesn’t understand it, and Nursey—he doesn’t know exactly what happens, what unseen switch is flipped, but suddenly Dex isn’t a handful of inches away, he’s _right there_, and their mouths are together, smiling but then not, lips lingering in a way that is both chaste and shaking Nursey down to his bones.

The contact lingers for maybe a handful of seconds before Dex pulls away. He swallows, eyes wide and unreadable, or maybe Nursey is just reeling too much to discern an emotion. Dex opens his mouth—the one that was just on _Nursey’s mouth_—and closes it. “Um,” he says. “I have to—I’ve got to—”

Nursey shakes his head. “Go, go, you’re gonna be—” He swallows. “Go.”

Dex pauses a moment—an eternity—longer before nodding, once, and leaving.

Nursey stares at the closed door, unseeing, until Ellie begins fussing in his arms. He looks down at her, face wrinkled with gas, most likely. He bounces her, unconscious, and tries not to let himself be consumed with the reaction to—

That.

*~*~*

_Four years and some change before today_

“Shit,” Dex said, on his knees on the kitchen floor. He was in the center of a solar system made up of open boxes and scattered pots and pans, which were then ringed by a mess of shoved-open cabinets and out-slid drawers. “I think we forgot a box on the truck.”

“Fuck, really? Which one?” Nursey popped up from his spot on the living room floor, pausing his important task of filling up the built-ins with his carefully sorted book collection. Well, somewhat pausing. Before Dex spoke up, Nursey’d been in the middle of a four-minute deliberation as he stared at the shelf meant for their DVDs, wondering if it was more presumptuous or practical to mix all of their movies together for optimal alphabetization.

“The plates and utensils and shit.” Dex sighed, settling back onto the floor, a deflated sun among his orbiting cardboard planets. He was wearing the same shirt he’d had on as they carried the boxes up and down the stairs from the truck, meaning it was visibly sweaty and mussed and too tight around his arms after four years of playing NCAA hockey interspersed with pulling up lobster cages. Neither of which he’d do again, Nursey thought vaguely, now that they had graduated.

“Oh.”

As if planned by a comical fate, Nursey’s stomach then rumbled loudly, and Dex frowned disapprovingly only for his to do the same. This was how, within the next hour, they had ordered a veritable sea of Chinese food, and were sitting on the living room floor eating out of containers with pilfered chopsticks. Nursey’s laptop, set up in front of them, played _Deadpool_, and Dex was explaining between wontons the plot of some comic book storyline and Nursey was half-listening, but mostly thinking about Dex’s ass as Deadpool sang about wanting to thank someone’s mother for a butt like _that_.

“The only thing I know about the comics,” Nursey said, as Dex trailed off to admire the well-choreographed fight scene, “is that Deadpool is queer and defo wants to fuck Spider-man.”

Dex opened his mouth (probably to bite the wonton he had raised, but also to retort) and then paused with a frown. After a moment, he sighed. “I’d argue, but you’re mostly right,” he said, and bit into his wonton.

Nursey laughed, probably louder than he should have if he wanted to make a good impression on their new neighbors. Then again, they were watching an action movie at midnight. That was probably a lost cause.

Still, Nursey remembers thinking, as he looked around their new apartment. It was going to be good here. It wasn’t a big apartment—for New York City standards, maybe, but it definitely wasn’t spacious. Two bedrooms at a pretty okay price, especially with Dex’s fancy new tech job, and Nursey’s first novel moving along in its publishing process. The bedrooms were small, sure, big enough for a twin bed and a dresser each, but the living area was spacious enough, with big gorgeous windows and a kitchen Nursey could already see himself watching Dex cook in.

Dex snorted into his container as Deadpool held up a crayon drawing, asking a criminal if he’d seen the man depicted in it before getting thoroughly punched in the face. Nursey stared for a moment too long at the side of Dex’s smiling face before turning away. The apartment, he knew then, could have been the shittiest, tiniest, most rat-infested place in the city, and he would still be happy, as long as Dex was sitting right there next to him.

*~*~*

_Today_

The dishes still have to be done, even if the proverbial rug of understanding has been ripped out from under his and Dex’s relationship. Nursey sets Ellie up on a blanket on the floor for tummy time and pushes up his sleeves before shoving his hands under the too-hot water.

Days tend to look something like this. Nursey working around the house, or writing, or running errands—which is mostly the same as what he did before. Except now he’s got a small ginger shadow that cries when she wants attention. Which is not, to be clear, a bad thing. If anything, Ellie makes even the most mundane of tasks better.

The people at the bank love her, hand over extra lollipops that Nursey takes for himself. (“Really. You’re _literally_ stealing candy from a baby, you realize that, right?” “It’s not like she can eat it herself, Dex-a-doodle.” A waggle of the eyebrows. “You sure you don’t want this blue-raspberry one?” “…” “I knew it!” “Shut up.”) The woman next door, who used to send Nursey and Dex dirty looks nights after they came back too late, now knocks on their door to give them leftovers from her dinners or extra sweets when she’s baking as a pretense for cooing over Ellie. Nursey’s parents, as much as they love him, have doubled their visits to his and Dex’s apartment since they brought Ellie home—at first to give advice and help out, but eventually to shower Ellie with gifts and praise and try to bribe her into loving them more than Nursey and Dex.

“Baa!” Ellie screams gleefully from her blanket, drawing Nursey from his thoughts. The smile that tugs at his lips is instinctive, at this point.

“Really?” he says dramatically. “He _said_ that?”

“Ee!” Ellie answers.

Nursey shakes his head, tsking. “Wow. See if I trust him to plant-sit for me again.”

Ellie appears to nod, though it’s probably just her strengthening her neck muscles, and Nursey laughs. As it settles in his chest, suds sliding off the plate in his hand, he strangely, suddenly, remembers the feel of Dex’s mouth on his. The smile chokes on his face. He shakes his head, then his shoulders, trying to rid himself of the feeling. He doesn’t have time to obsess over—that.

“Gah.” Ellie continues to stretch her head, a bubble growing at the corner of her mouth. Nursey watches her for a moment, water running clean over the plate in his hand.

“Hey, baby girl,” he says, soft. “What do you think about all this, huh? The whole—me and your uncle thing.”

Ellie blinks but does not make another sound.

Nursey returns his attention to the sink. “I know that it’s probably not a great idea. I mean. If—if it was supposed to happen, it would’ve happened by now, right?”

“Bleh.”

“I don’t know. Maybe—maybe we weren’t ready?” He slips the plate onto the drying rack. “I thought I was ready sophomore year and look what happened then.” He suds up a fork. “It just—it’s so easy, now, just to be—not _just_, there’s nothing _just_ about it, but you know we’re not—we’re—”

To phrase it like that is a betrayal. It’s not that he and Dex are _not_ something. He and Dex are _so much_. They—they’re late nights on the couch after separate but mutual bad days, limbs pressing, errant, against other warm limbs, the quiet acquiescence, the lack of acknowledgement not out of discomfort but because they don’t need it. They are nights out at karaoke bars, when Nursey embarrasses Dex by going up on stage, eventually convincing him to join, singing with liquor and laughter on their tongues, sweaty skin dragging, careless, and stumbling home drunk with it—all of it—and sated so fully that it’s almost unbearable. They are early morning sleepy side-glances and random midday texts of Buzzfeed articles that are wholly ridiculous. They are under-the-chin Snapchat photos and mutual complaining over bowls of candy and quiet moments and loud moments and good and bad and everything Nursey could want to share and everything he doesn’t have to. He and Dex—they’re—they’re—

“He’s just so _much_, you know? I don’t—I don’t know what I’d do if…” He grips too tightly at the sudsy utensil in his hand.

Ellie, probably sensing his discomfort, whimpers and wriggles around on her blanket.

“Oh, Ellie girl, it’s alright, kid, I’m alright.” The cooing tone of his voice seems to soothe her enough, and she settles. Nursey frowns down at her. What would happen if he and Dex did get together and then it went bad? What would happen to Ellie? Would Nursey still get to see her, or…

That’s the thing, he thinks, staring forlornly at a fork. What they have now—what they had even before Ellie—the easiness, the friendship, the safety and security and comfort of their relationship, it is the best thing in Nursey’s life. And yeah, he loves Dex more than he thinks he will ever love someone else—bar, maybe, Ellie, but that’s a different kind of love—but is he willing to jeopardize what they have now for the possibility of something potentially better, yet painfully more fragile?

“I don’t know, baby girl.” Ellie wrinkles her face up, which Nursey takes as sympathy, even though it probably just means he has to change her diaper.

*~*~*

_Four and a half years before today_

The blood swelled uncomfortably in Nursey’s face as he hung upside down from the top bunk. It made his vision go vaguely blurry, which wasn’t helping him with reading the extremely boring study guide in front of his face. He sighed, moving to sit up and try yet another position, when the door to his room banged open and he jerked, slipping from his precarious perch.

He realized he was falling just as he heard Dex say, “I got the job—_shit_, Nursey—”

Nursey braced himself for impact with the floor only for Dex to catch him just in time—or, well, sort of catch him.

“You’re fucking heavy,” Dex wheezed when the dust settled, Nursey almost entirely collapsed on top of his chest.

“That’s rather rude,” Nursey said, and giggled when Dex glared. He sat up and relieved Dex’s lungs. Dex took a breath, deep to the point of exaggeration, and as Nursey catalogued the swell of his chest, tightly encased by an old t-shirt, the words from before registered. “Wait. You got the job?”

“I think my punctured lung is more of a priority now.” Dex pressed delicately on his sternum. “You might’ve cracked a rib.”

Nursey stared at him, the giant ridiculous ginger. “Dex.”

“What?” Dex looked up from his chest, saw Nursey’s intent gaze, and smiled. “Oh, yeah. I got it.”

Nursey didn’t hesitate.

“Ow, Nursey, what the fuck—”

“Shut up and let yourself be hugged, Poindexter,” Nursey yelled into the side of Dex’s head, now almost completely on top of him with his arms as tightly wrapped around Dex’s torso as they could get.

Dex huffed a breathy laugh Nursey could feel buzzing against his own chest and raised his arms to loop warmly around Nursey’s waist. “I guess you’re happy for me, then?”

“For you?” Nursey affected his voice like he was frowning, but in actuality he couldn’t drag the smile from his face. “Nah, dude, I’m happy for me. Do you know how hard it would’ve been to break in a new ginger?”

Dex huffed again and punished Nursey with a tighter squeeze around the waist. Nursey felt properly chastised (read: delightfully, deliriously pleased).

“You’re going to be in New York,” he said. The grin was obviously, unfortunately audible in his voice, but he thought it could be forgiven, in that moment.

“Shit,” Dex sighed. Nursey could feel Dex’s smile against his neck and only barely suppressed a shiver. “I have to find an apartment.”

Nursey blinked.

He pushed up onto his palms and looked down at Dex, who had a smudged smile still on his lips. Nursey stared at it. “Move in with me.”

Lips pursed, downwards. “What?”

“I have an apartment lined up already. Two bedrooms. It’s only a few blocks from where you’re going to be working.” Nursey knew that because, when Dex told him he’d applied for the job, he’d looked up the distances, half-imagined scenarios of picking Dex up after work and taking him out to fancy dinners to watch Dex wrinkle his nose at the food, laugh, and go to some shady, tiny, comfy diner to wash away the pretentiousness with grease. Genuinely, Nursey hadn’t thought of moving in together until that very moment—he’d been planning on using the extra bedroom as an office—but as soon as he thought of it he knew without question that he wanted it very, very much.

Dex’s faced flattened imperfectly, like a sheet of paper someone tried to uncrumple. “Is that a good idea?” he asked, very deliberately not saying _no_.

Nursey realized only then how heavily he was pressing into Dex. Their legs were tangled, one of Dex’s ankles hooked around Nursey’s. If Nursey’s elbows bent into a push-up, their breaths would mingle, intimate. Nursey stared at a cluster of freckles just above the collar of Dex’s t-shirt. Would it be a good idea to put himself in a position where he would see Dex constantly, no reprieve, no potential for getting away if it got to be too much?

They lived together at the Haus, though. He saw Dex all the time here, too. Saw him in the kitchen in the middle of the night, sharing soft conversation over glasses of water, somehow simpler in the darkness. Saw Dex in the afternoon on the porch, nursing a lemonade or a beer, smiling and sun-drenched, up to listen to Nursey’s stories from the day and laugh at all the right parts and contribute his own stories, too. Saw Dex at Haus dinners from across the table, smiling around all the warmth, or at night on the couch to binge a show or watch a movie with legs and shoulders pressed close under throw blankets.

So many of the good parts of Nursey’s day were Dex, or Dex-adjacent. Could he deal with a little longing in the face of having Dex around?

“Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?” Nursey asked, his mouth twitching in the way he knew made him seem like a dick.

Dex rolled his eyes—the appropriate reaction. “Remember the last time we lived together?”

Nursey shrugged, but awkwardly as his shoulders were currently integral in his whole not-giving-into-gravity thing. “That was different. We wouldn’t be in one room _and_ we’re way more mature now.”

Dex looked pointedly down at where Nursey was completely encasing Dex’s body.

“Oh, shut up.”

Dex snorted, then softened his smile as Nursey continued to look at him attentively. “Really?” he asked, quiet. “You’re serious?”

“Serious serious.”

Dex’s eyes scrunched up, twinkling. “Well, in that case.”

Nursey beamed. “We’re gonna be roomies!” He collapsed again, hugging Dex tight.

Dex exhaled with Nursey’s collapse and complained, “I’ll take it back if you ever call us roomies again.”

“Stop being such a buzzkill, roomie,” Nursey said into Dex’s neck.

Dex sighed and raised his arms to hug Nursey again. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

“Undoubtedly.”

Dex squeezed tighter.

*~*~*

_Today, late morning_

Nursey squishes into the couch, frowning at his laptop screen, where the edits for his latest novel sit, unfulfilled. He just isn’t in the right headspace to be creatively logical, which is kind of what he needs when editing his stuff. He inconveniently wishes Dex was here, because talking to Dex about editing issues always helps him figure out what he wants to do. Dex is much better at literary things than he gives himself credit for. At least, his questions always get Nursey thinking in the right direction, anyway.

He looks over at Ellie, who’s beginning to drift off in her carrier. Nursey should most definitely wake her up, or her sleep schedule will become his nightmare. But he just looks at her. Her onesie is a size too big— “She’ll grow into it, Nursey!” “You just like it ’cause there’s a hammer on the front.”—so she drowns in it, the sleeves sliding over her baby knuckles where they curl around the edges of her carrier. Her short orange eyelashes pillow on the top of her pudgy, pale cheeks, and her eyebrows are so thin they’re almost invisible. Her hair—strawberry blonde and fine enough to be weightless—is similarly transparent, but tops her head nicely, falling just to the middle of her tiny ears. Nursey stares at her with sunshine in his chest, unable to pull his eyes away from her softly sleeping face.

A knock at the door shatters the picture. Ellie blinks herself awake and immediately begins to cry. Nursey stands up instinctively, picking her up out of her carrier. “Oh, it’s alright, baby girl. I get it, waking up is stinky.” He cradles her, bouncing as he walks to the door. Ellie’s still whimpering as he opens it and Mama, on the other side of it, frowns sympathetically.

“Oh, _niñita_, what has upset you?” she coos at Ellie. She does not explain why she is here.

Nursey has learned not to ask. He adjusts Ellie in his arms so she can see that Mama is here. “She was asleep when you knocked,” he says, pressing tickling fingertips into Ellie’s side to get her to giggle, “and she does not enjoy waking up.”

Mama tsks, side-stepping Nursey into the apartment. “She takes after her _papá_.”

“_Mama_.” Nursey closes the door behind her. “She’s not mine, and even if she was, I wouldn’t be her dad.” He swallows, tight, unexpected, thinking of Jay.

Her lips press sympathetically, briefly. “I’m sorry, _ mijo_,” she says, sincere, and then dumps several previously unnoticed grocery bags down on the kitchen counter. She begins pulling out their contents and then asks, more like a demand, “How are you?”

Nursey bounces Ellie, her whimpers beginning to subside. “Good,” he says, thinking of the—_that_. “You?”

“Good? I raise you for two decades and I get a ‘good’?” Mama knows their kitchen almost as well as Nursey does—which isn’t too impressive, considering how Nursey’s cooking abilities begin and end with cereal—so Nursey doesn’t have to correct her when she begins unloading the groceries, putting the dry foods in the right places.

“I talked to you, like, yesterday,” Nursey says, taking a seat at the kitchen counter. His foot begins tapping as he watches the seemingly endless number of groceries emerge from the plastic bags. Mama must’ve bought half the store to get all this.

“So? You have not lived since then? _Dígame_.”

Nursey racks his brain for something to say that isn’t _something happened this morning I’m freaking out I love him so much I think it might break me_. “Oh, Ellie said her first word.”

Mama’s eyes widen, deep brown sparkling, and she raises the carrots in her hand excitedly. “Amazing! What did she say?”

“Just ‘bye,’ but Dex and I were excited about it.”

Mama hums, approaching Nursey and Ellie at the counter. She brushes her fingers against Ellie’s cheek and smiles. “You smart little one,” she says. “It’s early for words, yes?”

“Yeah. I mean, not crazily, but all the books say it happens around six months, and she’s only five as of last Tuesday.”

Mama smiles, but her eyes pull down at the corners. “Your parents are looking down at you with pride, little one.” She presses a kiss to Ellie’s forehead and turns to open the fridge, beginning to unload the cold items. Nursey brushes his thumb against Ellie’s skin to get off the lipstick mark Mama left just as the sound of a key jiggling in a lock emanates from the front door.

Dex enters the apartment slowly, cautiously. He’s never entered the apartment like that before, always enters with the same confidence, same routine, same _I’m home_ expression on his face. Dex pauses his foreign entrance when he sees Nursey, opens his mouth to say something Nursey can’t predict for his life, but Mama cuts in, already approaching him with upheld arms.

“Dex!”

Dex blinks. “Marisol, hi. I didn’t know you were coming by today.”

“Oh, you know me. I love a good surprise entrance.” Mama leans in and presses a kiss to Dex’s cheek, relieving him of the take-out bag in his hand. She returns to the counter, calling over her shoulder, “How are you?”

“Good, good.” His eyes flicker to Nursey and Ellie. Ellie gurgles and Dex smiles, reflexive. “Ellie said her first word this morning.”

“I heard!” Mama seems to have finished her own groceries, reaching into Dex’s take-out bag instead. “I am very proud, though I still insist you teach her Spanish. Their minds are so receptive at this age.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” Dex says, smiling wider. It spreads the lipstick mark on his cheek and the melty feeling in Nursey’s chest swells. He stands, to give the feeling an outlet, and hands Ellie over to Dex.

“She missed you,” Nursey says, mumbles, as they do the switch. Dex glances up from Ellie’s gurgling face, an intensity in his eyes like he could hear the way Nursey smothered the words _I missed you, too_. Nursey fidgets and pulls away.

“Mm, sweet potatoes.” Mama peels open a container. “You boys have a lovely lunch planned.”

“Would you like to eat with us?” Dex asks, tickling Ellie’s tummy until she giggles. “I’m sure there’s enough for an extra plate.”

“Ah, no, I just ate. But I _will_ entertain the little one while you boys eat.” Mama approaches with arms outstretched and Dex laughs as he transfers Ellie into her arms. “_Gordita, tú estái’ creciendo tan rápido. Serás fuerte y inteligente y hermosa y_…”

Nursey watches on with both mild horror and bright affection. “I think we’ve lost her,” he says, turning to look at Dex, who is already staring back with a smile that trips Nursey up.

“Your mom or Ellie?”

“Both.”

Dex’s eyes crinkle in the corners and Nursey looks away.

Dex coughs. “Want to eat?”

“Please.”

Thankfully, Mama entertains Ellie in between interrogating Nursey and Dex about their lives, which keeps the conversation from falling silent or—god forbid—drifting to talk of this morning. Mama is a grade-A interrogator, especially when it comes to the lives of her children (“You live ten minutes from my house, you have spent Christmas with me. Dex, _mi niño_, you are mine now too.”), and she hasn’t seen Dex in at least a week, which gives her plenty of room to drag out details of his life.

Nursey—having heard all of the stories before—tunes it out vaguely, enjoying his sweet potatoes and wondering what would have happened if Mama hadn’t stopped by. What would they have talked about? Would they have talked at all? Nursey swallows scratchily around a bite. It hasn’t even been six hours and the—_that_ is already changing so much.

“Oh!” Mama exclaims, breaking into Nursey’s anxious imaginings, “I almost forgot.” She hands Ellie to Nursey and walks over to her purse, returning a handful of moments later with a plush, soft-yellow duck. “I saw this in the store the other day and just had to buy it,” she says, sitting back down. “_Es un pato, Ellie._ _Te gustas_?”

“Mama,” Nursey sighs. Ellie squeals and bounces happily in his lap. “You really shouldn’t spoil her,” he says, thinking of the elephant plush and the wooden train toys and the Winnie-the-Pooh mobile, all delivered in the last two weeks.

Mama waves her free hand dismissively. “Ah, it is Abuela’s job to spoil.” She grins at Ellie’s sparkling eyes and gummy smile. “Leave me be.”

Nursey glances over at Dex, brief, and then looks away. It’s one thing for Mama to imply that Ellie is his when it’s just them, but to do it in front of Dex…

The thing is, they haven’t really talked about it. They brought Ellie home and Dex was so full with his own grief and he only had so many mourning days off of work, and Nursey was there, he had the time, he loved Ellie. It just made sense for him to watch her. And it wasn’t like he was going to go up to Dex, still mourning the loss of his brother and sister-in-law and Ellie’s parents, and ask him what exactly Nursey was in this new dynamic. And he still doesn’t want to, he doesn’t need to clarify his role in her life. This is all so new and Dex doesn’t even know exactly what he is going to be to Ellie yet, and Nursey is totally okay with being there without question.

But in light of this morning, in light of the already apparent silence, well.

Ellie bounces, giggling, unburdened, in Nursey’s lap, and his hands curl just a little tighter around her.

*~*~*

_Two years and four months before today_

As the front door to the apartment opened, Nursey swiped at his face and sunk deeper into the blanket volcano he’d made himself.

“I’m home!” Dex called, shutting the door behind him with a click. Nursey listened to the arriving-home routine Dex seldom deviated from—the _swoosh-tap_, _swoosh-tap_ as Dex slipped off his shoes, the mild clatter as he rested his bag down on the ground in front of the mail table, the tinkle of keys in the dish. The television was on—playing _Good Omens_ for possibly the sixth time in recent memory, as Nursey liked to distract himself with magical literature whenever possible, but his eyes were too blurry to make out words, and so the show was the next best thing—but he had closed-captions on and the volume low, so the melody of Dex’s familiarity was easy to make out over the hum of Queen.

“Nursey?” Dex’s socks thumped on the wooden floor as he made his way to the living room. “You here—oh, hey.”

Nursey looked at Dex from over the edge of the closest blanket. The day at work must have been pretty good, Nursey assumed. The line of Dex’s shoulders was slumped, enough to be relaxed but not defeated, and the cuffs of his dress shirt were unbuttoned, casual, but not rolled up to the elbows like Dex did when he needed to focus on something difficult. It was Nursey’s favorite look on Dex—the softly rumpled, productive-but-not-exhausted aftermath Dex. This Dex shoved socked feet under Nursey’s thighs, fell asleep with smudged smiles on his face, stopped at organic grocery stores on the way home and cooked up some fancy recipe he’d seen on one of those Instagram accounts he pretended he didn’t follow. Nursey smiled into the blanket at the thought.

Then, however, the bleary smiling Dex stuttered, toes beginning to tap, brow wrinkling. Nursey watched him catalogue the situation—blanket-cano, _Good Omens_, face almost entirely obscured. He braced himself for the question, for the _what’s wrong_, thought up an answer that he could manage and convinced himself he could deliver it passably—at least from behind the blanket—but Dex just turned away.

Nursey shifted under his blankets, following the movement. Dex _thump_-ed to the kitchen, shoving open a cabinet, pulling open a drawer. Nursey couldn’t see exactly what he was grabbing, as the counter obscured his sight line, but he generally knew where things were—a spatula, a flat pan, a knife from the utensil drawer.

“What’re you making?” Nursey asked, muffled under the blankets, and just a bit throaty with the shed tears.

“You’ll see.”

Dex, using the stove, faced away from Nursey as he said it, but Nursey could tell by the red-pink flush on the back of his neck that Dex was pleased. Smug, even, if Nursey knew him like he thought he did. Nursey harrumphed and turned back around, catching the show at a not-infrequent moment when David Tennant was sashaying around the screen like [his thighs recently went through a vicious divorce and have now both showed up drunk to the same red carpet event](https://likeshipsonthesea.tumblr.com/post/185968717155/merripestin-theburialofstrawberries).

A warm, cheesy smell permeated the apartment as Nursey enjoyed the dynamics between the Them, wished he could be half as chill as Anathema, and enjoyed the banter between Crowley and Aziraphale with possibly a _bit_ too much self-projection. It was in the middle of one of his favorite scenes—the fight on the bandstand—when Dex suddenly stepped in front of Nursey’s blanket-cano with a tray in his hands and a dishtowel thrown over his shoulder in what Nursey (painfully) knew was an unironic fashion.

“Make room,” Dex said, and Nursey obeyed because 1. whatever was on that tray smelled very good and 2. Dex tended to be right when he used the clear-toned voice he was currently employing. When a plateau had been carved into the side of the blanket-cano, Dex carefully placed the tray on it, pulling out two wooden fold-out legs to stabilize it. On top of it was a plate with an overflowing grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of purple grapes. “Do you want water or something stronger?”

Nursey stared at the steaming cheese. “Water’s fine.”

Dex nodded and stepped out of frame. _I don’t even like you_, Aziraphale said on the screen, voice tremulous, desperate. _You do_, Crowley insisted, brazen, taunting but—softened, almost.

Dex returned with a water bottle and his own food, plopping down in the meagre blanket-free space remaining on the couch. “Which episode are we on?” he asked before biting into the perfectly golden bread with a soft crunch.

“End of three.”

“Aw, I missed the ’80s? Too bad.”

Nursey scrunched down his blankets to reach a hand out and take a half of the sandwich. The first bite crunched perfectly, the gooey cheese well ratioed to the toasted bread. It was more than just bread and cheese, though, had seasonings and shit. Dex probably used some fancy Instagram recipe. It was good. After Dad’s cooking, it was the best culinary comfort Nursey could’ve asked for.

“Do you think,” Dex asked, as he popped a grape in his mouth, “I could pull off an ’80s mustache?”

Nursey choked mildly on his bite as he wheezed. “Shut up,” he said, once he’d managed to swallow. Dex nudged the blanket-cano with his knee, a good foot away from any part of Nursey’s body, but the blankets shifted enough for Nursey to feel it. He glanced over in time to catch the tail-end of a smile.

It shifted into a grimace as the fourth episode started. “I hate this guy.”

Nursey turned to the screen and huffed. “He’s a tertiary character. He doesn’t even have a name.”

“Not the character, the actor. He was a dick in _The Walking Dead_.”

“You can’t judge this guy on the actions of an unrelated character on a completely different show.” Nursey gestured with his sandwich and, in doing so, his mouth remembered the taste and watered accordingly. He took another bite as Dex started on about how an actor playing an unlikeable character in another thing affected the perception of the current character they were playing. Nursey agreed, though he stipulated that it depended on the actor and the degree of difference between past and current characters. Which led into a discussion about _Jessica Jones_ and David Tennant and _Veronica Mars_, _The Good Place_, and _Frozen_, and eventually ended with Nursey pulling up a very disturbing picture of Deadpool but the suit was bright yellow and meant to look like Pikachu.

Dex winced and shook his head. “That’s… upsetting.”

“Exactly.” Nursey batted his eyelashes at Dex—most of his face now unobscured by the blanket. “I only show you the best, Dexy-kins.”

Dex rolled his eyes, standing to put his plates on Nursey’s now-finished tray. “I’m flattered.” He took the tray over to the kitchen, plates clinking against one another as he set them into the sink. The faucet flipped on, the rush of water unexpectedly loud. It muffled the sound of Adam’s yelling, on screen, and brought Nursey back to the haze Dex had pulled him from. He picked at a thread on the top blanket.

“My great aunt died,” he said. It only wavered towards the end, which Nursey was painfully proud of.

The rushing water _swooshed_ off, leaving the room too quiet. A soft thump, then another two. Nursey could imagine Dex standing at the edge of the kitchen counter, hovering.

An audible swallow. “I’m—that’s horrible. Are you—are you okay?”

Nursey shook his head, gesturing pointlessly. “No, it’s not—I never met her, she was like 102, I’m not—” He took a deep breath. “Mama is flying to Chile for the funeral.”

A few more thumps and Dex was settling slowly onto the couch. “I—how is that—” Nursey peeked over at him, the wrinkle between his eyebrows, the tightness of his mouth.

“In junior year, my mom took on this big account, and I—I don’t know what happened exactly, they never really told me, but my parents had a fight.” He shifted under the blankets. “Mom wasn’t spending enough time at home, Mama felt neglected. She said something that made Dad feel—I don’t know, unimportant?” Nursey realized he was brushing his thumb obsessively over a piece of blanket and stilled himself. “Just before Christmas, my grandmother died and Mama flew to Chile for the funeral without talking to Mom or Dad, so Mom scheduled a work trip and Dad went back to Chicago alone and I—”

Nursey stopped, sure the both of them were remembering that winter break at the Haus. Dex had stayed, too, for reasons Nursey figured out over the years following, and the Falconers had an away game the day before and after Christmas without a reprieve in between, so Bitty had been there too. Nursey hadn’t asked, but he figured it was all of their first Christmas away from family. Bitty overcompensated with more pastries than logistically possible and Dex and Nursey silently agreed to say nothing about it, or the overflow of sparkly decorations, or the nonstop Christmas movie marathon after opening presents. The things they did—the distractions—they only worked for so long. The silence grew, leaving splintering cracks in their wake, and with the holidays and his parents and the cast and the room—

“It was—not great,” Nursey said dully. “And it’s not—they’re fine, now, but with the funeral and the flying and—it’s stupid, I just.” He looked over at Dex, smiling like a fight against gravity. “My anxiety never makes any sense.”

Dex looked back without saying anything for so long that Nursey returned his gaze to his lap. It was strange, to have articulated all of that, as he and Dex tended to explain things—heavy things, at least—incrementally, through actions rather than words, or not at all. But that had begun to change, recently, and he’d just felt so _comfortable_, warm and cheesy and amused, and he knew Dex was wondering what was going on, and—and _Nursey_ wanted to talk about it. Wanted, maybe, to see if Dex could make it… better.

“It seems to make sense to me,” Dex said slowly, after a while. “But even if it didn’t, you don’t need to justify your emotions to feel them.”

Nursey couldn’t help it. He raised his eyebrows at Dex, a touch snarky.

Dex huffed into a smile. “Been reading too many self-help articles, I guess.”

“Mush,” Nursey muttered.

Dex nudged him again. “When is your mom leaving?”

“Tomorrow night. Funeral’s on Friday.”

Dex hummed. “Do you want to invite your parents over for brunch tomorrow? Maybe it would make you feel more—secure, or whatever.”

Nursey turned more fully, trying to read something—awkwardness, maybe—into Dex’s expression, but it was unusually calm. His eyes were open, relaxed, patient. The television continued to play, Armageddon dawning quickly. Nursey smothered an urge to smile.

“Will you make croissants? The chocolate ones?”

Dex’s jaw clenched and then released with a sigh. “Are you using your compromised emotional state to guilt me into making croissants?”

“Maybe a little.”

Dex shook his head and, maybe, tried to smother his own urge to smile, too.

*~*~*

_Today, after lunch_

“Why don’t you have a dishwasher?” Mama grumbles as she scrubs a plate. “It is the 21st century, no?”

“It broke like a month after we moved in, Mama, you know that.” Nursey wipes a fork with the dishtowel in his hands. “And, anyway, we like doing it.”

“Like doing chores.” She hands him the plate. “Crazy boys.”

Nursey just hums, drying the dish. The truth is, Dex likes doing them more than Nursey does. Whenever he gets anxious—or his variation of it—Dex gets chore-manic, vacuuming and scrubbing and washing whatever he can get his hands on. Dishes are his go-to, which Nursey likes, since there’s a set end to the task and he can help Dex as he does it.

“We are impressed,” Mama continues, because she’s never met a conversation she couldn’t elongate, “that you boys keep the apartment so clean with a baby around.”

“We take turns.” Nursey takes a glass from the drying rack. “One of us watches her, the other cleans. And she doesn’t make too much of a mess yet.” He runs the towel over the glass, around and inside, and wrinkles his nose when it still isn’t as dry as he’d like. “When she starts to crawl I’m sure we’ll be screwed.”

Mama hums and Nursey darts his eyes at her. Mama’s hums are never innocent hums. She hands him the fork, freshly washed, and Nursey takes it tentatively, waiting, waiting, and—

“You two haven’t had a break in, what, two months?” she asks, humming before and after.

Nursey intently dries off the fork. “About that long. But we don’t mind, we like being with Ellie.”

Mama gestures placatingly with the sponge. “Of course, of course.” She picks up a spoon. “I only meant that it is a lot. Maybe you need a night off.”

“Mama…”

“Derek.” Mama turns to look Nursey in the eye as she hands him the spoon. “I know it is hard for new parents to be away from their baby, but we all think—”

“You _all_? You’ve been _discussing_ this?”

“Don’t be so dramatic! We are worried.”

“Don’t be worried! There’s nothing to worry about, we’re _fine_.”

“You are not fine! Not when you stay shut up in this apartment all the time with no break!”

“Um.”

Mama and Nursey both turn, surprised, to see Dex standing at the counter. He _had_ been with Ellie in the living room, playing with her new duck toy, though even then there’s not much of a sound barrier. Nursey groans internally thinking of what Dex must have overheard.

“Dex, _mijo_, do you not think you could use a night off?”

Dex’s hands shift on Ellie—under the diaper and behind her back—to visibly and tangibly more secure positions. “Uh,” he says, and Nursey can see the strain in his shoulders, the slight bulge in the tendons of his neck. In any other circumstance, Nursey is sure he would be upset to see Dex facing Mama with this kind of thing, with a stance ready to fight, but as he examines the emotions in his own too-tight chest, all Nursey can muster up is gratefulness. _Don’t let her take Ellie_, he thinks at Dex, ridiculously, intensely.

And though Dex’s body seems to scream _I won’t_ right back, Mama isn’t that easy to dissuade. She softens her voice, says, “Dex, look at me.”

Nursey flickers his eyes up from Ellie—clutching happily, obliviously, at her new duck toy—to see Dex staring at her, too. He watches Dex pull his gaze from her, a painful, slow movement.

When he looks up, Mama says, “I know it is scary. Terrifying. When we had to leave Derek with the nanny for the first time, my boss had to send me home because I spent so much time on the phone making sure he was okay that I got no work done.” Mama reaches out and squeezes Nursey’s wrist with her sudsy hand. “But it is not good for you, or her, to never take time away. Everyone needs a break sometime, even a break from a good thing.”

Dex inhales, deep, and exhales slow. He looks down at the girl in his arms and Ellie, excited with the attention, bumps her new toy against his cheek. Dex smiles vaguely, his fingers curling tighter around her back for a moment before releasing. Nursey’s chest hollows itself out. Dex is going to say yes, he’s going to give Ellie up, he’s—

“Nursey?” Nursey’s anxiety chokes itself at the clear, open-eyed stare Dex appraises him with. “What do you think?”

Mama’s hand squeezes around Nursey’s wrist. Nursey sways on his feet and suppresses the urge to just say _no_ outright. He can’t—he doesn’t know what Dex wants from him here. Is he afraid to say no to Mama? Does he want Nursey to rein her in? No, no, he’d be more obvious about that. The tension in his body has shifted, he stands with his weight on the front of his feet, his expression open and patient. He genuinely wants Nursey’s answer. Nursey focuses on the water dripping from Mama’s hold on his wrist, warm but cooling as a droplet traces a path down the center of his palm.

“It’s probably a good idea,” Nursey says, slow and aching. He almost believes it, too. Mama thinks it’s a good idea, at the least, and he knows he can trust her when his own emotions get too paranoid.

Dex waits a moment or two before nodding slowly. “Okay,” he says quietly, and then louder, sweeter, he turns his face to Ellie and says, “How do you feel about that, Ellie girl? A sleepover at Marisol’s house?”

Ellie giggles, as she usually does when Dex uses that voice with her, and Nursey rolls his eyes, reflexive. “They’re going to spoil her rotten over there,” he says. His anxiety begins to simmer in his chest, cooling.

Dex looks up with a small grin. “She’s never gonna want to come home.”

Mama squeezes Nursey’s wrist once more before letting go and turning back to the sink. “Oh, I don’t think you boys have to worry about that.” She re-soaks the sponge and side-eyes Nursey, smiling. Humming. “A home with this much love is hard to leave.”

Nursey picks up a damp dish plate, pointedly ignoring Mama’s underlying implication, and then nearly drops it when he realizes the reality of what has just happened. Tonight, the night after the impromptu, understanding-shattering _that_ of this morning, it is going to be just him and Dex and no baby-buffer to the cut the silence.

_Oh_, Nursey thinks, _fuck_.

*~*~*

_Ten months before today_

It wasn’t until they were stood outside the restaurant that Nursey realized fully what a bad idea it was. On the website, the fanciness of the place was somewhat muffled, with hints at its class embedded in unpronounceable dish names and the double take inducing prices. But Nursey’s impression from the website was that it was fancy, but not too fancy that he couldn’t take Dex there and have a good time.

Unfortunately, he was mistaken.

The valet stared at them with mild disdain when they emerged from the taxi Nursey’d splurged for so they didn’t ruin their suits on the subway, and even with their attire, they paled in comparison to the elegant women in their floor-length gowns and jewels. Nursey was pretty sure he just saw a guy with an _actual cummerbund _walk in the door. His palms moistened nervously the longer they stood outside the front window, watching bow-tied waiters deliver encased dishes to diplomats and CEOs.

“Hey Nursey,” Dex said, as a man dug into an entirely gold-plated risotto, “would you be mad if we, uh, ate somewhere else?”

“Not at _all_.”

“Thank God.”

With the help of their phones, they found a delightful little Greek place a few blocks over, and within minutes were sat in a dull blue booth surrounded by the scents of savory spices and cooking meats.

“Much better,” Dex sighed, rolling up the cuffs of his button-down, his suit jacket hung neatly off the side of the booth. His cheeks pinked up—a deep, soft kind of pink—before his face appeared to realize that he was embarrassed. “I mean, thank you, for planning a nice meal, it’s just.”

“Hey, dude, chill.” Nursey stifled a grin at Dex’s responding eye roll. “Really, man, it’s fine. I did not realize when I made the reservation that it was that kind of place. I’d much rather be here, too.”

Dex smiled, his face softening in the way he’d only learned how to do since Samwell, this relaxation of tension, crinkling of eyelids, smoothing of eyebrows. It was the kind of expression that Nursey dreaded as much as he coveted it. It was the kind of expression much too difficult to look away from.

Nursey cleared his throat. “Anyway, on to the whole point of the meal.” He raised his sweating water glass in the air. “To you and your nerdy brilliance.”

Dex’s blush fluttered, deepened, more embarrassed. “To my boss, really,” he said, begrudgingly lifting his own glass as Nursey stared at him with raised eyebrows. “He’s the one who recommended me for the opening.”

“Because you’re a genius, you ass, just take the compliment.” Nursey tapped their waters together and brought his own to his mouth quickly to smother the too-wide smile threatening to escape there.

“Ooh, what’re we celebrating?” their waitress asked with an amiable smile, returning with their drink orders.

“He got a promotion,” Nursey hurried to say, before Dex could glare him into staying quiet. “He works at this crazy tech place, basically Google except less gimmicky.”

Dex, turning redder with the second, said, “Yeah, well, _he_ just finished his third novel. The last one was on the New York Times best sellers’ list for fourteen weeks straight.”

Nursey stuck his tongue out and was just about to add that Dex had been appointed the head engineer of the new prosthetics project, the design for which he’d played an integral part in creating, when he remembered that their waitress was being paid to be here and probably didn’t need to hear them fight each other with compliments.

“Wow,” she said gamely, “seems like there’s a lot to celebrate here. Why don’t I bring over some shots of ouzo? Perfect for toasting.”

“That would be great, thank you.”

When the waitress walked away, Dex nudged Nursey’s foot under the table rather pointedly. Speaking over Nursey’s indignant _ow_, Dex said, “You’re being ridiculous.”

“If I can’t be ridiculous with you, Dexy-doodle, who _can_ I be ridiculous with?” Dex sighed, long-suffering, and Nursey grinned, nudging him with his foot. “Come on, you love me.”

“I hate you.”

“No you do-on’t,” Nursey sang, batting his eyelashes. Dex maintained his glare for a short while but eventually gave in to the grin threatening at his lips. “See, you love me!” Nursey crowed.

“Yeah, so I do, whatever. Get out of my face.” Nursey cackled as Dex pulled the menu up to cover his smile, and then smothered the sound in his throat when he felt Dex press his ankle up next to Nursey’s in a move that could only be described as tender.

Well, shit.

When their waitress returned, they ordered their food and enjoyed the shots she brought, the heavy licorice taste surprisingly enjoyable—even to Dex, who was a hilariously picky eater. In between sips, they talked about various things—their days, random thoughts they’d had, weird people they saw on the subway. Sometimes Nursey marveled over how they never ran out of stuff to talk about. They saw each other every day, they lived together, and yet Dex could still find things to talk about that surprised and delighted Nursey to no end.

And if their ankles stayed linked all the while, as Nursey gestured too vigorously with his hands as he spoke and Dex’s skin turned all different shades of red and pink as he cycled through stories, well. Neither of them said anything about it, and it only enhanced Nursey’s enjoyment of the meal, so really, what was the harm?

They were halfway through the meal—Nursey stealing from Dex’s plate while Dex complained dutifully in between musings over if they should get more ouzo shots—when Dex’s phone began buzzing furiously in his pocket. Nursey sat up a bit to peak at the screen while simultaneously nicking a piece of zucchini from his plate. The screen flashed a zoomed-in picture of the side of a woman’s laughing face, and Nursey made out the name _Kelsey_ from the upside-down contact listing.

“Oh, shit.” Dex wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Do you mind if I take this? It could be about the baby.”

“Sure, yeah.” Nursey gestured with his stolen zucchini. “Go ahead.”

Dex said, “Thanks,” and held the phone up to his face to answer the video-call, and then immediately winced as Kelsey screamed upon doing so. “Shh,” he said, to no avail, as he jammed at his volume button. “I’m in public.”

Kelsey’s tinny laughter filled the small booth. “Who cares, kid, I’m having a baby!”

“Not that creating a human isn’t amazing or anything, but I kind of already knew that.” Dex grinned, somewhat dopily, at his phone screen, and Nursey forced himself to look away from the unbearable softness of the expression by stealing another piece of zucchini. Without removing his eyes from his phone, Dex knocked Nursey’s fork away from his plate and tugged admonishingly on Nursey’s ankle. It surprised Nursey into sitting still long enough for Kelsey to work herself into a Story.

“I know that, nerd, but there’s been a development! I went to the baby doctor today and they put this horrible cold gel on my tummy and I was complaining all about it and then she said, ‘I can tell you the sex of the baby if you’d like,’ and for a second I was like, ‘Whoa, my baby’s having sex?’ which is totally not a stupid thought, _Jay_—” Jay’s laughter could be heard in the background, “—and then I realized what she meant and I said DON’T TELL ME,” her voice reached volume levels that the phone, apparently, could not handle, and Nursey and Dex winced in tandem, “because I didn’t want to know, you know, my mom did that for me and I thought it was cute, only knowing once the thing popped out—”

Nursey wrinkled his nose and mouthed “popped out” over at Dex, who snickered and attempted to hide it behind his water glass. Kelsey, still going, did not appear to notice.

“So she gave me a little piece of paper with the sex on it in case I changed my mind and, like, I took it to be nice and also ’cause I kinda wanted to know, but not enough to _look_, you know? Anyway, I brought it home and I left it on the table and I was staring it down all night, fighting temptation. It was all very Catholic, I’ll have you know.”

Nursey choked mildly on his own drink.

“Kelsey,” Dex said, chastisement in his tone but a smile in his eyes.

Nursey, even with the screen facing the other way, could _see_ the disregarding gesture Kelsey made in response. “But it was all for nothing anyway, because I was making dinner when Jay got home and he picked it up without knowing what it was and was like, ‘Babe,’” here Kelsey affected a deep voice that somehow sounded both nothing like her husband and exactly like Jay’s slow, lazy intonation, “‘why is there a piece of paper with the word girl on it?’ And, like, _obviously_ I started freaking out and jumping around, and Jay had no idea what was happening, thought it was hormones or some shit, I don’t know, but I was so—”

“Kelsey.” Dex’s eyes were wide and round, sparkling like cider. The blind, blatant happiness on his face was something Nursey was still adjusting himself to seeing. They’d lived together for years—six, now, if he counted the Haus, which Nursey did—and they’d been friends for longer, but it wasn’t until recently that Dex had begun to let himself be so open with his expressions, emotions, the like. Nursey had thought he could read Dex well before, but ever since the wall came down it was something automatic, like actual reading, where you can’t help but understand just from a glance, even without making the effort. And now, before Nursey had even registered the desire to understand, his chest was tightening and the corners of his lips were tugging to the sides and the core of him—the soul, the consciousness, the whatever it was—was doused in this distracting, wholly wonderful warmth, and—and Nursey didn’t quite know what to do with that, yet.

“Kelsey,” Dex said again, when Kelsey just continued to talk, “are you telling me it’s a girl?”

“—and then I remember the pasta—what? Oh, yeah. It’s a girl.” The crooked grin in her voice was only audible to Nursey because he’d spent many a Facetime call on the other end, slumped against Dex’s shoulder, too tired (or at least pretending to be) to sit up on his own. “You’re gonna have a goddaughter.”

“Holy shit.”

“I know.”

“Holy _shit_.”

“I _know_.”

Dex started laughing then, the kind of bubbly thing that overflows without care or worry, and Nursey preemptively waved down the waitress to get more celebration shots. When he looked back over to watch the joy play across Dex’s face, he found Dex staring at him already.

“Nursey.”

“Yes, Dex?” Nursey attempted to smother his smile and failed. Can’t win ’em all.

“I’m gonna have a niece.”

“I heard.”

Nursey could only enjoy the slightly dazed look on Dex’s face for so long, as Kelsey then piped up, “Is Nursey there? Let me see!” Dex dutifully flipped the phone. Kelsey waved at Nursey from the screen, only her head and shoulders in frame. She was wrapped up in blankets and slumped onto her couch with what was probably Jay’s arm around her. Her hair was messy and her seldom-worn glasses were on and she looked so happy that Nursey felt it from states away. “I’m having a girl!” she said, beaming. “You’re gonna be an uncle to a little girl!”

Nursey laughed, awkward, and glanced at Dex, but he was seemingly still dazed and made no comment. Nursey elected, diplomatically, to ignore it. “Congrats, dude, that’s awesome.”

“I know!” Kelsey beamed for a moment or two more before frowning dramatically. No matter how many times Nursey spoke to her, he was ever surprised by the swiftness and flexibility with which her expressions changed. “Where are you two?”

“We went out for dinner to celebrate Dex’s promotion.” Nursey raised an empty shot glass into frame. “A little Greek place. Great alcohol.” He grinned. “Great zucchini.”

“_My_ zucchini,” Dex grumbled, turning the phone back around. “He’s a thief.”

“You probably deserve it,” Kelsey said intelligently. “Sorry I interrupted your dinner, I’ll let you go.”

“I’m glad you called,” Dex said. His foot tugged at Nursey’s ankle. “I’m happy for you. Even you, Jay.”

“Thanks, kid,” Jay’s voice came, far away and almost unbothered.

Kelsey said, brighter, “Love you, see you!”

“Love you, too,” Dex said, and ended the call. He inhaled and exhaled slowly, deeply. Calls with Kelsey were always nice, but usually just as tiring. Dex put his phone back in his pocket, picking up his fork to resume eating his—arguably smaller than when he’d left it—meal. “Wow,” he said, shaking his head. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment and swallowed. “It’s bizarre to think of Jay with a baby at all, let alone a little girl.”

“He never helped babysit the horde when you were kids?” Nursey dug back into his own meal, which was delicious, though unfortunately lacking a disgruntled Poindexter as a by-product of each bite.

Dex laughed and made a face. “Jay? No way. He hated kids.” He took another bite of his meal. “Every family event, he’d be off with the cousins twice his age, wiping out in touch football trying to keep up, drinking even when he hated the taste. Doing whatever he could to get out of hanging with the babies.” Nursey could imagine a time when Dex would’ve said something like that with a guilty, dark expression, with the underlying implication that he should’ve done the same, been more manly or whatever.

Instead, Dex said it with the kind of fond bafflement that Bitty used when the boys got particularly rowdy. Nursey smiled into his food. “Where were you at these events?” he asked his pasta.

“With the babies.” Dex laughed to himself and then sobered, considering a piece of zucchini on his fork. “I was good with them, I guess. Even when I got older, I usually stayed on babysitting duty.”

“Nanny Poindexter has a nice ring to it,” Nursey said, pursing his lips. Dex tugged on his ankle admonishingly but didn’t pause his thoughtful expression to chastise.

“They didn’t get rumors, you know? Like, as long as I could read them their favorite story or play Legos with them, they loved me. They didn’t care about—stuff.”

Nursey pressed his ankle closer to Dex’s. “They’re not the only ones who don’t care about stuff.” He meant, of course, the team, their family, even Nursey’s parents to an extent, but more than that he was thinking of Kelsey—who’d latched on to the first brother she’d ever gotten with fiercely protective and well-manicured claws—and Jay—who seemed to try, despite all the mistakes—and even Dex’s own parents now—who didn’t quite know how to say it audibly but made it known in little ways, important ways.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Dex shrugged and poked at his plate. “It’s just hard to—forget the feeling, or whatever.” He scrunched up his face. “You know?”

Nursey tapped his fork against the side of his plate rhythmically. He thought of paranoia wrapped in rationalized irrationality, thought of secret breakdowns and silent conversations, thought of how many years it had taken him to ask someone point-blank if they liked him and make his brain believe the answer. Thought of how, sometimes, he still couldn’t manage that.

“Yeah,” he said, a sheepish smile. “I know.”

Dex glanced up from his food, a quick dart of a glance that Nursey understood without trying. The understanding, the sympathy, the gratefulness, all wound together around the shuddering cage of Nursey’s chest, and his heart slowed itself in wonder. The fork similarly ceased to tap against his plate.

Dex cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said, gathering food onto his fork, “what about you?”

“What about me?”

“How’re you with kids?”

Nursey shoved a piece of food in his mouth.

Dex rolled his eyes. “Come on, you can’t be that bad. How many kids have you even met?”

“I’ve got a baby cousin,” Nursey said, once he’d swallowed. “I only see her a few times a year, if that. She’s pretty chill, I guess, but every time I held her she cried. Mama said it’s ’cause babies can smell fear.”

Dex smirked. “She’s not wrong.”

“I _know_.” Nursey poked at his food morosely. “I’ve met a few kids—C’s sister, Coach Hall’s baby, you know, things like that.” He shrugged. “Never saw the appeal, really.”

Dex nodded, slowed and considering. When he’d swallowed the bite in his mouth, he asked, “Do you think you want kids one day?”

The waitress arrived then with the requested ouzo shots and Nursey tried to remember how they’d gotten to this part of the conversation. They thanked her, toasted to Kelsey and Jay’s baby girl, and downed the shots, and once the glasses hit the table Dex regarded Nursey with a patient and expectant gaze.

Nursey sighed. “I guess,” he said, “vaguely. I never really gave it much thought. Thinking about the future stressed me out, and kids meant being able to provide for them, someone to have them with. I think I might. I could.” He pushed his water glass and shrugged at it. “Depends on the person, I guess.”

“Makes sense,” Dex agreed, and Nursey couldn’t read his voice like he could Dex’s expressions, so whatever Dex’s subdued tone meant went over Nursey’s head.

“What about you?” Nursey picked up the glass he’d been pestering. He brought it to his mouth and raised his eyebrows over the rim. “Do you want kids?” he asked and took a sip.

“Oh, definitely.” Dex smiled at the table. “Maybe it was ’cause of my family, but ever since I was a kid I’d think about being a dad one day. Thought about what I’d do differently from my parents. Thought about what books I’d want to read them. What skills I’d want them to learn.”

Maybe it was the soft pleasure in Dex’s face as he spoke, or the way his foot had begun to brush back and forth against Nursey’s under the table, or maybe the significant number of ouzo shots was just getting to him, but the words came out before Nursey could think of the intent behind the question. “Ever think about the person you’d have them with?”

Dex glanced up, his gaze seeming to dart between his lashes as if they were never really meeting each other’s eyes for longer than a moment. He looked away. Nursey reached for another sip of his water. “Not really,” Dex said, quieter, less pleased, more thoughtful. “When I was a kid I knew it had to be a woman, but imagining her just made me feel—itchy, I guess. So I avoided that part. By the time I realized I didn’t have to box that part of it, I’d just gotten used to the empty space in the idea.”

“Easier to fit someone into it, though, right?”

Dex looked up fully. Nursey was disturbed, momentarily, at how he couldn’t immediately identify the emotion in his face. Crinkles at the corners of his eyes, but mouth pulled flat, not smiling, with a deep, almost red flush on his ears like his anger typically manifested, but it wasn’t angry it was—sad?

“You could say that,” Dex said, an underlying inflection in his voice like when they traded inside jokes in public, but Nursey was unfortunately outside of this one.

Nursey noticed then that their plates were both empty, their drinks all but gone. He cleared his throat. “We should probably get going,” he said. “If we leave now we can grab dessert from that place down the block from us.”

The unknown expression slid from Dex’s face as he smiled once again. “Good idea,” he said, as if nothing had happened, and Nursey played along—paid for the meal, since it was in Dex’s honor, teased him about his new job title as they waited for the Uber, stole from Dex’s plate again when they got to the dessert place—but the moment stuck in his mind.

As he got into bed that night, he tried to remember the nuances of the expression, figure out where bits of it matched things he understood. It kept him up later than it should have and, in the end, he had to give up. Tired, drifting, he turned over in bed and blearily wondered if there would ever be a day when he would understand Dex completely. His subconscious answered with a laugh. _I hope not_.

*~*~*

_Today, later_

“You two had a busy afternoon.”

Nursey looks up—upside down, as he’s lying on his back on the floor between the living room and kitchen—and watches Dex enter the apartment. Dex moves through his coming home routine—shoes off, bag down, keys in the dish—and then approaches Nursey and Ellie where they lay. Upside down, his smile looks vaguely melancholic.

“Blocks are endlessly fun,” Nursey says solemnly and the melancholy grows.

“Are they now?” Dex murmurs as he settles down on the floor in his nice slacks, reaching over to tickle Ellie’s tummy where she’s sitting up on Nursey’s chest.

“You know that thing she does,” Nursey asks, looking from Dex’s vaguely smiling face to Ellie’s gummy, beaming one, “when she likes something, and laughs endlessly at it for hours on end until she tires herself out?”

Dex curls his hand around Ellie’s, stilling her grabby motion. “Yeah,” he says, and Nursey doesn’t have to look at him to know what kind of sigh sits within his features.

Nursey swallows. “She’ll probably need a nap or she’ll be fussy for my parents later.” He says it apologetically, means it as such. Because Dex wasn’t supposed to be home for another hour and the only reason for the overcorrection in punctuality Nursey can think of is Dex wanting to spend some time with Ellie before she leaves for the night.

The sigh escapes. “Yeah.” Dex waves Ellie’s hand up and down. She giggles pleasantly. “Mind if I put her to bed?”

“Course not.”

Dex settles his hands beneath Ellie’s armpits and hoists her off of Nursey and into his own lap. “Ready for some sleep, Ellie girl?” Dex says, in his softer voice. “It’s been a long day, huh?”

Nursey stares at the ceiling, listening to the brush of cloth on hardwood as Dex shuffles his way to standing, socks sliding near-silent as he carries Ellie to their shared bedroom. The door shuts with a soft _thump_. Nursey ought to get up and do something, as lying on the floor won’t accomplish much. Not that the afternoon had really been about accomplishing anything. He’d spent the entirety of it with Ellie, playing blocks or reading to her or just holding her in his lap and looking at her with an ache in his chest he couldn’t—didn’t want to—name.

With a deep inhale, he pushes himself off the floor. He cleaned as they went, playing today, so there isn’t much to do about that, but his parents will need a baby bag if they’re going to watch Ellie for the night, so he grabs the one travel bag they have and starts packing it up.

He had the forethought to set out things earlier, so it’s simply a matter of orderly putting them into the bag, and once all the boring bits are done Nursey gets to move on to the, arguably, most important part.

The toys.

Ellie—as the child of a fairly extended family and the dependent of two caretakers who couldn’t say no to anything cute if their lives depended on it—has quite a lot of toys. Some she uses intermittently, some she’s played with once and never shown interest in again, but there are a few toys that she will cry for on a fairly regular basis.

One—which isn’t what Nursey would call a High Priority Toy, not yet at least—seems to be the duck that Mama brought earlier today. Ellie played with it for most of the afternoon, and even if it isn’t one of her all-time favorites, Nursey figures it’s only safe to include it, just in case she has a want for it while she’s away from home.

Nursey plucks the soft yellow toy from the top of the pile and hesitates to add it to the bag. He brushes his thumb against the fabric of the beak. He doesn’t know why the ache in his chest pulses. He doesn’t know, really, why the ache is there at all. His parents are good people, good _parents_. They raised him, after all, it’s not like they aren’t qualified to take care of Ellie. He shouldn’t be worried about tonight. He shouldn’t be—fuck, he shouldn’t be _scared_.

He shoves the duck into the bag, kneeling down in front of the toy crate to look for other favorites. There’s a bear she likes from Dex’s mom, with a blue ribbon tied in a bow around its neck, and the squishy blocks they played with today are probably a safe bet. He reaches for one or two of the baby books Ellie likes the colors of and accidentally knocks over a toy in the process. He picks it up distractedly and goes to replace it in the pile when he notices what it is.

A fabric hammer with a bright red handle.

Nursey squeezes it. It gives and reforms. He squeezes again.

This was Ellie’s first toy ever. Dex told him the story after he drove back from Maine when Ellie was born. Nursey had elected not to go with him, half because he’d been on an editing roll finishing up his novel at the time, and half because it felt more like a family thing, anyway. He missed Dex like crazy, though, the whole time he was gone, and when he got back Nursey was perfectly content to listen to him rave endlessly about his new baby niece.

“And she’s so tiny,” Dex had kept saying with this dazed look on his face. “Just. So small. Jay bought her this squishy hammer toy and when she holds it—fuck, Nursey, it’s bigger than her head.”

“A hammer?” Nursey remembers saying around a smirk. “I didn’t know Jay was so big on smashing gender stereotypes.”

Dex had shrugged, the beaming smile on his face softening momentarily. “Guess those things matter less to him now,” he’d said, and any other quip Nursey could’ve thought up fell from his head at the quiet, pleased tone of Dex’s voice.

For the first month, every picture Nursey was sent, every Facetime call he joined into, Ellie was holding her little hammer. Usually she was sucking on one end of it, or sometimes crushing the fabric against her cheek, but it was always there, along with her smile and ridiculous tuft of soft orange hair.

When she came to live with them, she initially wouldn’t let it out of her sight. In fact, it was only about a week ago that she went a full day without crying for it. It’s hard, Nursey thinks, to recognize if a baby as young as Ellie remembers things. Like, she grins whenever Dex comes home and seems to recognize Nursey’s parents, but she’s around them pretty often. Sometimes he looks at her and wonders if she knows, if she understands that she won’t see her parents again, if she misses them. Things like the hammer, like when they open a new box of clothes that smells like her old home and she wriggles restless in whoever’s arms she’s in, like when she throws her head around looking for something and nothing Nursey tries to give her soothes the ache—things like that make Nursey painfully sure that Ellie feels the loss.

Nursey squishes the hammer and watches it slowly puff up again. He adds it to the bag, trying not to wonder if Ellie can tell the difference between a temporary loss and a forever one, trying not to wonder if he can’t anymore either. It’s one night, he tries to tell himself. One night isn’t going to do any harm.

One night.

Nursey stares at the hammer. One night away, what harm could it do. One drink with dinner, what harm could it do. One new stop sign in a town that never quite learned how to adapt, what harm could it do. One night isn’t anything, right, except when it is, and those kinds of things have the darkest sense of humor. One night away, one night without paying attention, one night Nursey falls asleep—

Nursey puts down the travel bag and walks over to Dex’s bedroom, pushing the door open before he can think of a good enough reason to do so. Inside, Dex lies on the bed, suit jacket off, button-down undone so the cotton of his undershirt is bare. Ellie rests her cheek against it, a bubble forming in the corner of her mouth. Her eyelids flutter vaguely, little pearls smooth and sure as she holds herself asleep between Dex’s chest and palm, which rests on her back, curling slightly at the fingertips, unwilling to move.

Nursey stares at her, at them, for long moments, leaning back against the now-closed bedroom door for support. After a second or minute or whatever he feels secure enough to look up at Dex’s face. Heavy-lidded eyes focus on the top of Ellie’s head, the sure slant of his jaw bent, the light from his bedside lamp soft and shadowing so all of Dex’s angles look sharper. Jay was like that—like Dex but harder, had the same freckles and jaw but more pronounced and all his parts, expressions, seemed gruffer, rougher, when Nursey had known Dex first. Nursey had never quite learned to like the comparative sharpness of Dex’s brother and it’s a truth he’ll always have to live with, now.

“Watching her sleep?” Nursey says, mind and mouth working on the kind of muscle memory that pushes an anxious boy through boarding school without raising any upsetting questions. “Not gonna lie, dude, that’s kind of creepy.”

Dex’s eyes flutter open, wider, rising to meet Nursey’s. A guilty sort of relief floods Nursey’s chest at the visible, tangible fear he finds in Dex’s face.

Nursey breaks out his broken-pieces smile, the one that brings wrinkles to the space between Dex’s eyebrows every time without pause. “Mind if I join?” he asks, staring at the folds.

Dex shakes his head.

Nursey lays down on the vacant side of the bed, turning his body towards the line of Dex’s, the bump of Ellie’s. With the freckled hand not currently spread over Ellie’s rhythmically rising and falling back, Dex laces their fingers together. Nursey squeezes, once, and does not wonder what it means. This, he knows. This, he recognizes. His body learned years ago how to take the comfort Dex could give him, learned to take it without question or condition. It was the only way they could share it, at one point, and now, in this softly aching room with all its pieces, Nursey has no desire to change it. 

*~*~*

_Three years, almost exactly, before today_

“_Fuck_.”

Nursey tried to muffle the expletive into his hand as well as he could, as it was sometime after midnight and stubbing his toe on the corner of the counter wasn’t a good enough reason to wake everyone else up, but he didn’t manage it—or at least not enough to keep Dex from sitting up blearily on the couch.

“Nursey?” In the dark, Nursey couldn’t really make out the specifics of Dex’s face, but he could hear the smacking sound of his lips as he chased the sleep taste from them.

Nursey held back another curse. “Hey, sorry, it’s me. Go back to sleep.”

Dex, true to character, sat up further and began to stretch, accomplishing exactly the opposite of Nursey’s request. “S’alright,” he said, husky, “wasn’t really sleeping.”

It was obviously a lie, but Nursey let him have it. “Couch too lumpy?”

“Something like that.” Nursey could make out a shadow of movement as Dex rubbed at his own cheek. “What’s with the grumbling?”

“Stubbed my toe.” Dex snorted. “Hey, it’s dark, it’s not because I’m clumsy.”

“You are clumsy.”

“No one is contesting that, but this time it was not my clumsiness’ fault.”

“Clumsiness’,” Dex mumbled, resting his chin on the back of the couch. “Stupid word.”

Nursey made a _mleh_ sound with his mouth, disgusted. “All words are stupid. Words can fuck right off.”

A cloud must have moved in the sky, uncovering the moon, as there was suddenly enough light to see Dex raise his eyebrows at Nursey in an expression that was simultaneously both amused and concerned. And maybe, just a little bit fond.

“I take it the writing is not going well.”

Nursey made another angry noise and collapsed in a chair at the kitchen counter.

“And what? You thought an afternoon with the Poindexters was the perfect inspiration?” The cloud had moved again and there wasn’t enough light to read Dex’s expression by. His voice was higher than normal, raspier, but that could’ve just been his recent awakening and, anyway, Nursey never really understood Dex’s relationship with his parents enough to respond to.

He elected to ignore it all together. “Inspiration is not the issue. The idea is already there, it just _sucks_.”

“It does not suck.”

Nursey scoffed petulantly. “Tell that to my editor.”

“She never said it _sucked_, she said it needed some reworking.”

“That’s code for sucks.”

“_Nursey_.”

Nursey sighed, standing from his seat to stumble over to the couch and collapse onto it from behind. Cheek crushed into Dex’s pilfered blanket, he said, “I think it sucks.”

Nursey had written the whole novel within a handful of months, struck by an idea he couldn’t let go of. He’d enjoyed writing every bit of it, had kept Dex awake too late reading him his favorite lines. When he’d finished it, self-edited it, he handed it to his editor grinning ear to ear, and then she’d called him up a week later and said the dreadful words.

_It needs some reworking_.

That had been months ago and he’d spent nearly every day since staring at the Word document wondering how he had ever let anyone read it. He’d been so tied up with hating the thing that he hadn’t been able to figure out how to fix it, or even attempt to try. Spending the day with Dex’s parents hadn’t inspired him any more than going out drinking with Dex or visiting the team up in Boston had, but it’d become habit to spend his sleepless nights glaring at his laptop and wallowing in his own gross emotions.

Nursey’s melancholy, growing greater with each bitter thought, stuttered in his chest as he felt a skittering, tentative, _warm_ palm settle over his shoulder blade. “I didn’t think it sucked,” Dex said, voice hovering in that awkward way he had when he didn’t know what he was doing. He did the same thing with his body sometimes, like when he got confused in the middle of a recipe or misread directions on his phone. Nursey was thoroughly charmed by how Dex converted the visible, physical thing into a sound, and even more charmed by the fact that he could recognize it. “I liked the idea of it,” Dex continued, building in confidence, if not volume. “I liked the characters. I liked the story.”

Nursey turned his head to look at Dex’s face but it was too dark to make anything out. He wriggled around until his back settled against the cushions, legs hanging off the back of the couch. Dex’s hand shifted with the movements, falling ultimately on the center of Nursey’s chest. His palm rose and fell with each of Nursey’s sighing breaths.

“I did too,” he whispered, almost guilty about it. He had really loved the story, loved the characters, the idea. He still did, kind of, through the haze of word hatred and narrative ire. The story was good, the nuts and bolts, as Dex’s father might have said, that was solid, but the frustrating part was that Nursey couldn’t figure out how to make it _work_ in a way that was interesting, engaging, or enjoyable.

The silence stretched, yawning sleepily between them. Nursey loathed the idea of returning to his bedroom, where the story waited, and Dex didn’t voice any complaints that he was there taking up half of Dex’s borrowed bed. Clouds moved across the sky, casting the living room in ivory and shadow in turns. One of Dex’s parents was snoring in the bedroom.

Dex hummed, after a while, curling his fingers so they pressed more firmly against Nursey’s stolen Sharks t-shirt. “Thanks for coming with us today,” he said. “I know they’re not your favorite people but you made it… Just. Thanks.”

Nursey frowned at the ceiling. “I like your parents.”

Dex snorted softly. “You do not like my parents.”

Nursey pushed himself onto his elbows to turn his frown on Dex. “Yeah I do.”

There was enough light to see Dex roll his eyes. “You don’t know what to do with my parents.”

Nursey opened his mouth to protest further and then paused. He thought for a moment then said, carefully, “That doesn’t mean I don’t like them.”

Dex’s fingertips began to move in a slow circular pattern. Absentmindedly, most likely, but it set Nursey’s heartbeat up a notch and made him worry that Dex could feel it. He watched shadowed expressions shift on Dex’s face for a minute or two as he calmed down and, feeling too full of imperfect words, he then began to speak.

“You know how it is with Bitty’s parents?” he said, quiet. “Like, how Suzanne is sweet and Coach means well and you like them just fine when you’re talking, but you can’t really, like, _forget_, ever. Forget what they—”

“Yeah.” Dex’s voice caught and he cleared his throat. “Yeah, I know.”

Nursey settled back down on the couch and folded his hands together over his stomach. “Sorry,” he said and panicked again at Dex’s fingers, only this time because they stopped moving.

“No, it’s—” Dex stopped and Nursey didn’t breathe until Dex made another sound, which was a short, huffed, audibly self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t know how to forget either. I don’t—I don’t know if I’ve forgiven them, even. I—I know you have your stuff with your parents too, but I don’t know—I don’t know how to explain it if you haven’t—I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to,” Nursey said, not intending it to be a whisper but that’s the way it came out.

“No, I want to, I just—” Dex swallowed around a frustrated noise and, without thinking, Nursey curled a hand over Dex’s on his chest. He squeezed tightly, unrelenting. “They say they’re okay with it now and I believe them, I do, I just. I’m. I can’t stop waiting for something else to happen and make them stop loving—”

Nursey wanted to sit up and wrap his entire body around Dex and hold him until he forgot that love could ever be conditional. He wanted to go into Dex’s bedroom and pull his parents out by the ear and make them apologize until the sun rose. He wanted to go back to whatever time he could and keep this from ever happening, and he’d _do it_, he’d live in the early 2000s again, he’d live in fucking _Maine_, if he could just keep Dex from using that shaking, shuddering, stopping tone of voice ever again.

“And how fucked up is that?” Dex shook in his seat, the vibrations emanating down to his wrist and Nursey’s hand, curled around it. It made Nursey anxious, his hands always shook when he was anxious, and he held on tighter. “I’m holding this against them and it’s been—it’s been like three years, I should forgive them, I should be able to see it from their perspective, shouldn’t I?”

“Their perspective is _wrong_,” Nursey said, and meant it with every tangled emotion in his chest. This word, at least, fit.

“Maybe it is,” Dex said, “but they’re my parents.”

Nursey stared at the ceiling. He held Dex’s hand to his chest until it stopped shaking and then a little longer after that. He wondered if Dex had ever said this to anyone before. He would have thought Bitty, but if this all happened three years ago, when Bitty and Jack came out to the whole world, Nursey doubts Dex would’ve talked to him about it then.

It gave Nursey an almost guiltily pleased feeling, to be the only one. Dex trusted him. Trusted him _emotionally_. Yeah, they’d been friends since sophomore year and they’d basically been co-captains senior year and they were roommates and they were close, but neither of them was any good at talking about their feelings. Dex preferred to stay silent and Nursey liked to talk around things, which had just made them good at reading between the lines or the spaces between words, respectively. And though Nursey loved that—loved understanding Dex and being understood in turn—this kind of verbal communication came with this lovely undercurrent of _want_.

_I want you to understand_, it seemed to say. _I want to be known by you_.

After some time, Dex cleared his throat. “Sorry to dump all this on you.”

“Don’t.” Nursey squeezed Dex’s hand. “Don’t be sorry.”

Dex didn’t say anything, but he turned his hand around in Nursey’s grip and laced their fingers together. Nursey beamed at the ceiling, assured in the darkness that Dex wouldn’t be able to see.

“You’ve got an early breakfast tomorrow,” he said, when he could make himself stop smiling. “I should let you sleep.”

“Okay.”

Nursey clumsily righted himself on the couch without letting go of Dex’s hand and then stood. It was too dark to see anything, Dex’s face included, which was probably a good thing. Dex squeezed Nursey’s hand one more time before dropping it and Nursey made himself return to his bedroom without looking back.

Nursey’s laptop still sat on the center of the bed, open but asleep with how long he’d left it idling. He pressed the on button and folded himself down in front of it, frowning as the Word document appeared on the screen. He scrolled back a few pages and read from a line he didn’t hate, looking for a way to make it good.

He noted the issues as he went—awkward phrasing, unnecessary details in some places and not enough in others. Mostly, though, he kept straying back to this other character, a side character, who wasn’t meant to be the close perspective in the third person. He didn’t know why he kept drifting there, as the character was something of an asshole and from his perspective it was a completely different story and Nursey was supposed to be a competent writer, he should _know_ better than to—

Huh.

Nursey bit at the inside of his bottom lip and tapped his fingers just below the keyboard. After a moment or two, he closed the Word document and opened a fresh one. He set his standards—Garamond, size 12, 1.5 spacing—and then stared at the blinking black line for a few more breaths before he began to type.

_A new perspective_, he thought, picking up speed. _How interesting_.

*~*~*

_Tonight_

The room is cast in softly fading light as the sun begins to set. Nursey hasn’t looked away from Ellie, sleeping, long enough to check Dex’s face, but he imagines that Dex is similarly alert, soaking in as much of Ellie while he can. Nursey doesn’t know what time it is, or how long they’ve been lying like this, and a part of him hopes that the haziness means they can stay like this indefinitely.

This, of course, is not true. A bubble begins to grow at the corner of Ellie’s mouth just as there’s a knock on the door. The bubble pops but Ellie doesn’t stir.

“I’ll get it.” Nursey’s somewhat jolted by his own voice. He sits up, slow, and hesitates to stand. Dex squeezes his hand once and Nursey takes a deep breath.

At the door are not one, not two, but three Nurse parents. They smile at him, in turns encouraging and bright and sympathetic. Nursey waits for one of them to look somewhat normal—Mom is the first to reach it—before he says anything.

“Hey.” He pulls a grin onto his face. “What’s up?”

Mama tsks and sidesteps him into the apartment. “Don’t try to get out of this now. I am spending time with that baby tonight and you cannot stop me!”

Nursey rolls his bottom lip against his teeth. “I see Mama’s dictatorial side has come out.”

“Be nice to your mother.” Mom kisses Nursey on the cheek as she walks through the door. “She’s been excited all afternoon.”

“Excited to steal a baby,” Nursey mutters, muffling the words against Dad’s shoulder as he pulls Nursey in for a hug.

Dad laughs, letting him go. “Excited to hang out with the coolest kid under two feet in the greater tri-state area.”

“Coolest kid in general in all areas, but yeah, I’ll concede the point.” Nursey shuts the door, now that all three parents have stepped inside, and turns to face them. They stand in a line, smiling, and Nursey suddenly longs to collapse back against the front door for support.

He can’t let that show on his face, though, so he concocts a stronger smile. He gestures to the bedroom with his thumb. “Dex has her down for a nap right now, but—”

“I will wake them!” Mama grins, unprompted, and swiftly leaves the room.

“You couldn’t’ve given me a sibling so that Mama wouldn’t torture my best friend’s niece 20-something years later?” Nursey says forlornly, watching Dex’s bedroom door shut.

“There are several things to unpack in that sentence, but I think I’m going to ignore all of them and ask after a baby bag?” Mom blinks expectantly—the same blink she uses on interns in the office when she feels they aren’t scared enough yet—and Nursey pushes himself from the doorway to grab the baby bag off the counter.

“I’ve got a change of clothes for sleeping, for the morning, and if there’s an accident, and there should be enough diapers and food to last well into tomorrow if we get held up.” Nursey doesn’t envision being delayed from picking up Ellie, but just as his anxiety panics about being away from her, it helpfully panics, too, about anything that could possibly go wrong in addition to that. “She usually takes her formula with no problem but if she wants solid food—I’ve put applesauce and pureed carrots in there—if she wants it, she’ll cry for it and then fight you eating it, but if you put it away again she’ll just keep crying.” Nursey stares at the bag in his hand, trying to remember if there was anything else. “Oh, and the toys—”

“Derek.” Mom stills his hand, curling her fingers around his wrist. Nursey stares at it. He hadn’t been aware that he was gesturing so wildly with it as he spoke. Shit. “Honey.” Nursey looks at Mom’s face and can’t deal with the wide-eyed sympathy there, so he looks away again. “We know what we’re doing.”

“Yeah, kid, no shade,” Dad smiles kindly, taking the bag from Nursey’s hand and shifting it onto his shoulder, “but we dealt with a terror. Ellie’s small potatoes next to you.”

Nursey’s stupid anxiety-ridden heart doesn’t settle down in his chest, but he swallows around it and it muffles, some. “I would be mad,” he says, weakly but picking up normalcy as he goes, “about you totally throwing me under the bus right now but you just said _shade_ and I’m kind of reeling.”

Dad grins, knowing that his improper use of modern slang tends to mild even the worst anxiety storms. “I’m hella cool,” he says. He tugs Nursey into a side hug and, into Nursey’s hair, adds, “We’ve got this.”

Nursey ducks his head to hide the way his smile doesn’t quite fit on his face. “I know,” he tells the slightly uneven floorboards. He doesn’t say, _My anxiety doesn’t care about rational things, like your ability or general statistics. My anxiety eats whatever it gets and fuels the part of my brain that makes me want to shake apart to stop feeling things so much. My anxiety is the monster under the bed, the kind that doesn’t go away when parents shine flashlights on it, and the worst part is that it’s afraid of _itself_ and it just eats and eats and_—

Nursey doesn’t say that, because he learned a long time ago that telling his parents about his anxiety doesn’t do anything except make them sad. He musters a realer smile and looks up.

Just then, though, Dex comes walking out of the bedroom, still holding Ellie, as Mama practically chases him through the doorway. “You can call us any time if there’s an issue,” he’s saying, bouncing a grumpy looking Ellie in his arms. “Really, it’s no problem. In ten minutes, in an hour. Four A.M. I’ll be awake.”

Mama rolls her eyes. “The point of a night off,” she tsks, “is to actually use it, _mijo_.” She gently tugs Ellie from Dex’s arms, which he allows despite the way his eyes widen and the stress muscle in his neck bulges. “We will let you know if there is an issue,” Mama says, grinning exaggeratingly at Ellie to get her to smile—which she doesn’t, though her pout lessens, somewhat. “But please try not to worry _every_ second she is with us.”

Dex watches Ellie, eyebrows hung heavy and a growing, weary smile on his face. “It isn’t that I don’t trust you. Or that I’m not grateful for what you’re doing. It’s just… well.”

Mom moves closer, squeezing Dex’s shoulder. She’s inches shorter than him, but somehow she manages to look down at Dex, her chin tilted towards her heart with the warm kind of smile on her face that she used to give to Nursey when he reached the end of a sad book. “Will, honey. I know this is scary. We all understand that.” Dad nods encouragingly, Mama more distractedly as she attempts to amuse Ellie into a smile. “But we know what we’re doing, and this is going to be good for you.” Mom’s gaze flickers back towards Nursey. “Both of you.”

Nursey shoves his hands in his pockets to try and hide the way they shake.

Dex pulls a smile onto his face, not unlike the one Nursey’s been wearing since his parents walked through the door. “Thank you,” he tells Mom, who looks back to him with a smile. His eyes drift towards Ellie again. “I’m sure you’re right.”

Nursey taps his fingers against his leg and wonders vaguely if he should be more concerned that he and Dex have lying to his parents in common.

“Well,” Mom says, clasping her hands together at her chest, “we don’t want to hold you up. I’ll just grab her carrier and we’ll get out of your hair, hmm?” She looks to Dad, who adjusts the baby bag on his shoulder with a smile, and then to Mama, who manages to look up from Ellie long enough to nod. Mom picks up Ellie’s carrier from the ground next to the kitchen counter and says, “Have a good night, boys. We’ll see you in the morning!”

Each parent says goodbye, with a kiss, to Nursey and then Dex, and then the three of them walk out of the apartment with Ellie in their care. The front door closes behind them with a soft _thwick_ as the lock catches. Nursey and Dex stand staring at the door without moving as an eerie, buzzing silence slowly pervades the apartment.

In the span of a day Nursey’s relationship with Dex has been fundamentally questioned, his parents have masterminded a plot to take away his kid, and now he’s left sitting in an apartment with no baby buffer and an unwavering tangle of anxiety in his chest and Nursey has absolutely no idea what to do with any of it.

After a minute, Dex purses his lips. “Want to get takeout?”

Well. That’s a start.

*~*~*

The thing is, they’ve been around each other for going on eight years now.

Regardless of their friends’ not-so-subtle-chirping and Nursey’s parents even less subtle implications and even Dex’s family’s stumbling words around the subject, they know in that unavoidable societal conditioning kind of way what their relationship looks like to outside perspectives. Kindly old ladies on the subway smile at them when Dex falls asleep with his head against Nursey’s shoulder on their way back from a night out and their upstairs neighbors who makes cookies every Christmas always hands them a tray addressed to _The Nurses_ and every work function Dex drags Nursey along to is inevitably laden with the, “No, we’re not—” and “Oh, I’m sorry—” awkward explanation conversations.

Nursey isn’t blind to it. _Dex_ isn’t blind to it.

It’s become the kind of thing that they deal with easily, a subtle correction here or an uncomplicated ignorance there. Nursey was raised by a set of platonic parents—save for Mama and Mom, who are decidedly _not_ platonic—so it isn’t like he doesn’t understand that some of the most important relationships in life will, and should be, unromantic. And Dex—with his _I’m home_ expressions every day after work and his eagerness to share the fancy Instagram recipes he finds and the smile, tired and lovely, that he’ll turn on Nursey when they’re just hanging out on the couch at the end of the day with the ache of comfort in every touch—Dex doesn’t seem to think their relationship is any less important than something romantic, either.

And for all the implications those around them make—even for how true they might be, at least on Nursey’s part—they’re content being friends.

But, as Nursey said, they’ve been around each other for more than eight years now. They’ve been around each other in all kinds of emotions, situations, levels of sobriety. Sometimes, especially with two people as close as they are, things are bound to happen. And that is the secret, the part even the sloping smiles and intent gazes of friends and family and random old ladies on the subway don’t know.

The secret is this: it happened. Once. Exactly once.

Almost.

_Four years and a bit before tonight_

Nursey was drunk. Not tipsy, not _getting there_, not find-him-on-the-roof-reading-poetry-to-himself kind of inebriation, not even lying-on-the-pong-table-with-his-shirt-off-and-ruining-someone-else’s-game-as-he-recites-Shakespeare kind of intoxicated. On this night, Nursey was the kind of drunk that giggled at anything someone had to say, the kind of drunk that thought words were restricting and attempted to communicate through a system of variously pitched hums, the kind of drunk that prompted his friends to ask, “Who _the fuck_ was on Nursey Patrol tonight?” in a tone that promised everlasting ire for whoever the answer was.

The owner of that tone on this particular night was Holster, who frowned down at Nursey collapsed in the corner of the dining room cuddling what—if Nursey’s hazy memory is to be trusted—felt a lot like a cactus.

Nursey looked up from what he remembered to be a very interesting pattern of beer stains on the rug to see Holster’s big frowning face and beamed uncontrollably. “Holster!” he exclaimed—or possibly something that sounded like it—as Holster was back from Boston for the Frogs’ graduation party and Nursey felt like he hadn’t seen him in _so long_.

(This, Nursey only remembered later, was fairly untrue. Not only had he seen Holster that morning, and the day before, but they’d met up a week prior after finals had ended for a weekend in Boston with the rest of the team for a night of raucous drinking and even more raucous nostalgic sobbing.)

“Nursey, who was on patrol tonight?” Holster asked seriously.

Nursey giggled. “This teddy bear is prickly.”

Then, in a most fortunate sequence of events, Holster turned to survey the room for a friend of theirs who could actually answer that question—read: a friend who was sober—and in doing so opened Nursey’s sightlines to Dex on the other side of the room chatting with Farmer. Nursey remembers most things from that night as hazy images at best, but the bright pink flush of Dex’s skin—_everywhere_, his ears, his cheeks, drifting down his neck and under the collar of his t-shirt—will likely never leave Nursey’s mind as long as he lives.

Holster, distracted, did not notice that Nursey was scrambling up until he was halfway across the room, cactus forgotten, fallen, on the floor. When Holster shouted after him, Dex and Farmer looked over and Dex smiled, this bright and honest thing, and back then Nursey wasn’t accustomed to sincerity in Dex’s emotions and the whole thing made him trip over his own foot and go careening into Dex’s chest.

A laugh rumbled under Nursey’s cheek. “Someone’s had a bit too much tonight, huh?”

Nursey hummed something back.

Dex hefted Nursey upright, though still leaning heavily into Dex’s body. Holster caught up with Nursey just as Dex said, “We should probably get you to sleep.”

Holster was still frowning. Nursey knew that from his voice as he said, “Are you sure?” but not from looking at him, as Nursey was very busy in that moment staring at the point where Dex’s pink flush disappeared just as his collarbone started. Nursey remembers wanting to lick it.

“Yeah.” Dex wrapped his arm around Nursey’s shoulders. “I think I’m hitting my limit, too.”

Thinking back, Nursey remembers how Dex listed to the side under his weight, how his words slurred softly over the parts that would typically be harsh. But in that moment Dex felt like the most solid thing in the world and Nursey would’ve been happy letting Dex lead him anywhere.

Despite Holster’s continued frowning and Farmer, who had joined in, Dex led them out of the dining room without complaint, only pausing as they stepped into the hallway. “Do you think you can climb up to your bed?” Dex asked, voice loud to combat the music and dancing and general party around them.

Nursey frowned. “Where’s that?”

Dex frowned in return, wrinkles appearing between his eyebrows that Nursey wanted to smooth out with his fingertips. They smoothed out on their own, though, after a minute and Dex changed their course from the staircase to the basement door. Carefully, he helped Nursey down the rickety old steps. The only reason they didn’t tumble to their deaths, probably, was that Dex had been maneuvering those steps for a year and a half at that point, at all different levels of sobriety, and could mostly descend them on muscle memory alone. They reached the bottom and Nursey wasn’t nearly as grateful to be alive in that moment as he should’ve been and Dex led them into his little hide-away.

“Take off your shoes,” Dex said, as he slipped out of his own, hands going for the button on his jeans. Nursey obeyed without thinking and then sobered significantly as Dex shoved his pants down his thighs.

“What,” Nursey said intelligently.

Dex blinked up from where he struggled to get the left leg of his jeans off. “What?” he asked in return.

Nursey, drunk and not entirely convinced he wasn’t hallucinating, did not question the situation further. He mimicked Dex, taking off his shorts, and slipped into the side of the bed pressed against the wall as Dex directed him to. The light went off between one blink and the next and then Dex was on the other side of the bed, close and warm and smelling of tub juice.

“We’re in your bed,” Nursey said in the dark, feeling both drunker and unbearably more awake.

“Mhmm.” Dex felt sleepy soft on the other side of the bed, his words pungent and heavy.

“We’re in your bed _together_.” Nursey didn’t think Dex was understanding the significance of this. He and Dex had shared beds before, once or twice on roadies or when they went to visit their friends out of town, but Dex’s bed was 1. small, especially for two NCAA athletes to share, and 2. _Dex’s_. It was—_intimate_. Nursey was under Dex’s blankets, skin sliding against Dex’s sheets, cheek resting on Dex’s pillow.

“S’nice,” Dex said, almost definitely falling asleep. His eyes were probably closed, his mind already half unconscious. Nursey couldn’t see him in the dark, but he remembers imagining a sleep-soft Dex, smiling around the word _nice_, enjoying the warmth of Nursey’s body.

It was probably the alcohol, or the fact that they were graduating soon, or just that Nursey had loved Dex for a while at that point—long enough to ache though not long enough to learn how to deal with it—but regardless of the reason, and without thinking too hard about it, Nursey began to lean in. His cheek shuffled against the borrowed pillow, his eyes slid shut as they weren’t aiding navigation anyway in the dark, and he felt his bottom lip brush what must have been the top of Dex’s and just—paused.

He held himself there, suspended between drunken irrationality and Dex’s mouth, and maybe in a different world, at a different time, Nursey would have pushed forward that last bit. Maybe Dex would’ve done it, tilted up to slot their mouths together correctly and kiss the drunken daylights out of a primed and readied Nursey. Maybe it would’ve been a simultaneous decision and they would’ve swallowed the same breath just to be together, however momentarily, however drunk.

But instead of any of that, Dex’s mouth moved under Nursey’s skimming one as he said, “M’glad we’re friends.”

Nursey remembers pulling away, this icy pit in his stomach. It was such a strange sensation to be both blearily grateful and overwhelmingly disappointed. “Yeah,” he said, bottom lip tingling. “Yeah, me too.”

And see that, too, was the part that other people didn’t know, the part that let Nursey roll his eyes at the teasing and wave off the misunderstandings with only a small, manageable pang around his heart. Even if Dex didn’t mean it as a “just,” as thankfulness for the platonic part. Even if he meant it in the same way Nursey felt it, as a “I love being your friend, even if I’d like to be something else, too, this is worth it just as it is,” even then Nursey had to be ridiculously drunk to even consider risking the friendship part, the companionship part, for something he could be wrong about, something that could break.

He and Dex—they _fit_. And even if it hurts, even if Nursey wants to be able to fit in other ways, too, he’s terrified that it won’t work. And where will it leave them, then?

*~*~*

_Tonight_

The drawer of takeout menus is opened and the bickering, expectedly, begins.

“You like the Chinese place,” Dex insists, gesturing with the menu in his hand.

“That isn’t the issue,” Nursey says, flopping the Thai menu back at him. “You always order too much and then leave the leftovers in the fridge for a week to get all crusty and then _I_ have to throw them out.”

“I’ll just order less this time.”

“You always say that and never do.”

Dex pouts (unfortunately, it is exceedingly adorable). “Well, we’re not getting Thai. You always order something you swear you like and then it gets here and you hate it and end up eating all of my food.”

“That’s not true!”

“It’s happened, like, six times. See.” Dex grabs the Thai menu from Nursey, pointing at a series of black _X_’s on it. “We crossed out the ones you definitively don’t like.”

Nursey peers at it. One of the _X_’s is dark and muddled—apparently a second _X_ was added on top of it, probably when Nursey ordered it despite the warning and hated it once again. The name next to it is, incidentally, the exact dish Nursey was thinking of ordering.

“Oh,” he says. He looks to the drawer. “Want to just get Indian?”

Dex shrugs and picks up the menu. “Sure.”

Neither of them mentions that they have this same argument four times out of five whenever they order takeout. The bickering is half the fun.

As Dex places the order—since phone conversations with strangers prod at Nursey’s anxiety—Nursey flips through some media options on the couch idly, a growing contentment in his chest at the non-weirdness so far. They fought a familiar fight and agreed to the night plans without any fuss and Dex hasn’t intimated that he wants to speak about the—_that_ and Nursey’s gotten his Ellie panic down to three minute intervals rather than a continuous burn, so all in all he’d call it a successful night so far.

“It’ll be like forty-five minutes,” Dex says, joining Nursey on the couch. “What’re we watching?”

“Either season four of _The Umbrella Academy_ or _Queer Eye_ episodes we’ve already seen.”

Dex tugs at the blanket thrown over the back of the couch. “Well, those options are so similar I don’t know how I’ll ever choose,” he says blandly, spreading the blanket over his lap.

Nursey nudges him with his foot. “Shut up. Pick one or I’ll play an HGTV show and not let you criticize their decisions.”

Dex huffs. “Fine, _Queer Eye_.” He throws the other end of the blanket over Nursey’s legs. “Can we do season two?”

“Of course.” Nursey flicks the remote, dropping it once the episode starts. Typically, during a show they’ve both already seen, they’d talk through it, but tonight they remain silent. It’s probably because Nursey hasn’t seen these in a while and is getting surprisingly absorbed in it. Other explanations hurt to think about, so he doesn’t.

One episode takes them through the waiting period and, when the buzzer goes, Dex gets up to answer the door and Nursey pauses Netflix as the next episode queues up to go help Dex set out the food.

Dex hefts the bags onto the countertop. “Are we in a plates and utensils kind of mood or a plastic cutlery and cartons kind of mood tonight?”

Nursey presses his hands into the countertop and leans into it. “Cutlery, how fancy.”

Dex huffs something like a laugh. “Yeah, peak class.” He tosses Nursey a little packet of plastic utensils and a napkin.

Nursey snorts. “I don’t feel like doing dishes, but if you want to, I’ll get out the real stuff.”

“Uh, yeah.” Dex doesn’t look up from the takeout bags as he says it. “Yeah, I’ll do them.”

Nursey nods and turns to pull out plates and bowls while Dex gets them real cutlery—the fancy kind, if you will. After they load up their plates, they return to the show, eating and watching without talking again. This time Nursey can blame it on the food and settle into the silence without fault, but once they finish their respective plates and the silence lingers regardless, things get—harder. Nursey remembers every few minutes that Ellie isn’t here and every time he does he misses her more, and if he isn’t thinking about Ellie he’s trying to remember exactly how much not-talking is typical for a night like this and failing miserably.

When the second episode _finally _ends, Nursey stands to collect the empty plates and bring them to the sink to get out some of his anxiety. That was one of the things Dad always tried when Nursey was a kid. “Shake out your sillies,” he’d say, shaking and wiggling like an idiot, and Nursey doesn’t know if it was the actual moving or the fact that Dad was ridiculous and there and _trying_ that made it better, but it tended to work. Not that Nursey is going to go and wiggle while carrying a bunch of dishes, but the essence of the thing is still there.

Unfortunately, though, Dex pauses the show and follows Nursey into the kitchen with the water glasses. Dex likes having the sink clean as soon after eating as possible, so it’s no surprise when he immediately turns on the faucet and grabs the sponge. Nursey hovers as Dex adds soap and starts to scrub. He could help dry—even though he detests drying dishes, as they never get dry enough for his standards—or he could go back to the show, or even something else, but if he doesn’t dry it would be a very obvious deviation from their routine and will that make Dex think that this morning changed things? Does it mean that this morning _has_ changed things?

Nursey panics and grabs the dish towel.

Dex hums as they work, which he usually does when doing chores—something about his mother doing it, Nursey thinks—but other than that they make no noise. Nursey takes what Dex washes and dries it imperfectly and puts it away in the cabinet. It’s quick, efficient work, and mostly disguises the way Nursey’s hands have begun to shake.

They do this every night, dinner and dishes, but usually Ellie is on her blanket and cooing, or in her carrier and giggling at a toy, or even already put to bed and snuffling in her sleep over the baby monitor. The apartment is so painfully quiet and Nursey’s getting these itchy flashbacks of days when his parents all had to work and the brownstone was full of its own emptiness, or roadies during early junior year when he was left behind all broken and suffocating in the tightness of his cast. He tries to focus on the task at hand but the anxiety buzzes in the back of his mind, distracting, until suddenly there are no more dishes and Dex is looking at him with the worried wrinkle between his eyebrows.

“Nursey?”

“Nothing. I’m—nothing.”

Dex does not point out that he didn’t ask what was wrong. He stands and watches Nursey, unrelenting and there and so—so—_freckly_.

Nursey can feel the panic building in his chest which, helpfully, just makes him more panicked and he’s fairly sure he’s about to have his first full-blown panic attack in years when Dex says, “Want to drink?”

Nursey inhales like resurfacing. “_Yes_.”

Dex grabs the bottle of wine he got leftover from a work thing that’s been sitting out on the counter and pops the cork. Nursey, beginning to calm, grabs the glasses. Dex pours them both a liberal amount and Nursey raises his own to toast to something only for Dex to immediately gulp down a handful of sips.

“Okay,” Nursey says, and matches him.

This is mostly how the next hour proceeds, with intermittent breaks to wonder if they have the ingredients for sangria—no—and then margaritas—yes, but the margarita mix went bad sometime since they last used it (probably when Shitty graduated from Harvard) which the internet says is, like, incredibly rare—and eventually they just open another bottle of wine neither of them can remember getting.

“S’good, though,” Nursey says into the glass, watching the red swirl around distractedly.

“Anything that gets me drunk right now is good enough for me.” Dex takes a generous swig. Nursey watches the way his throat works around it and his jaw heats up.

He scratches at it idly and asks, “Why’s that?”

Dex scoffs. “Why do you think?”

“Because my parents stole Ellie?”

“They didn’t _steal_—but. Yeah.” He pouts into his wine. To drunk Nursey, it is even more adorable. Go figure.

“If they didn’t steal her it’s only ’cause you gave her to them.”

“Hey!” Dex’s eyebrows shoot up to kiss his hairline and then drop. “S’not my fault,” he mutters, taking another sip. “You agreed to it.”

“What was I gonna say? ‘Oh, no, Mama, you can’t have Ellie for the night because I never really got over that anxiety thing and now I’m terrified to lose her so soon after we lost her parents’—” Nursey swallows his words, wine-soaked. “Sorry, I—sorry.”

Dex laughs, sour, mouth stained. “You’re right, though. You’re—” He shakes his head. “You know I haven’t taken a cab to work since it happened?”

Nursey looks up from his glass. “What?”

“I can’t make myself—I just keep thinking.”

“But there was—it stormed all last week.”

Dex stares at the counter blankly. “I can’t—it was their first night, Nursey. Their _first night_ out of the house. She was so excited, she—she sent me all these pictures of clothes.” He gestures at nothing. “She didn’t know which outfit to pick, so she said she was going to do mid-date changes so they’d all get a chance.” He blinks, clearing his eyes, and they refocus on his wine. “It was the last thing she said to me,” he says, and swallows the remainder of his glass.

“Dex…”

Nursey—he doesn’t know—he thought they were getting better. Thought Dex was, at least. He _seemed_ like he was. That first week after the accident Dex walked around in a haze, like he didn’t know what was happening and didn’t care. The only time his eyes seemed to clear was when Ellie was around. After the funeral, after they got back home, it was—not _normal_, but Dex went back to work and went through the motions and he seemed—not happy, but getting there.

Nursey swallows and tastes the remnants of wine. The thought that Nursey isn’t alone in the continued anxiety is comforting. But the possibility that he hasn’t been reading, _understanding_, Dex in the past two months negates any possible comfort he could glean.

“It happens so quick, Nursey.” Dex looks up, suddenly, shocking Nursey from his own thoughts. His gaze _hurts_. “They had all these—all these plans and now Ellie, now they never get.” Dex stops.

Nursey hesitates momentarily before he stumbles to standing and drops into the seat next to Dex, curling his hands over bits of Dex’s shaking body. Shoulder, warm and firm, wrist thin and thundering.

“I don’t—” He licks his lips and tastes fruitiness and sweetness and an aching absence of what to say. “We get to, at least,” he says, whispers, and it doesn’t feel like enough but he’s tipsy and tired and anxiety still buzzes on the backs of his fingers and down his spine, and he loves Dex so much he just wants to make it better. “We’ll be there for her, okay? We’ll make it good. We’ll be—good.”

Dex stares at him, his eyes so wide and red and close, and Nursey remembers staying up late at Samwell trying to write a poem that would explain how he felt when he looked into Dex’s eyes, the brown so bright it was burning, on fire, alight. Every time he read it to someone they wouldn’t understand and so the poem sits in a six-year-old note on his phone that he thumbs through when looking for his list in the grocery store. Dex’s eyes are familiar, now, like the path he walks on the linoleum floor from the strawberries Ellie adores to the peaches Dex will make a pie with, if it’s the right time of year, to the milk and eggs and basics of their life. Their life.

Drunk, Nursey can’t distinguish between the various, endless kinds of love in his chest. All his uncouth body knows is that Dex is there, between his hands, and so beautiful so real that Nursey’s shakes shudder in the solidity of it.

“Dex,” he says, with no idea where he’s going with it, but Dex saves him from having to—always saves him, if he can—by pressing forwards with his wine-sweet mouth and then they’re kissing.

It is not chaste. It is not brief.

Dex reaches up to hold the line of Nursey’s jaw. It fits in his hand like a sigh, and Nursey does—sigh, that is—which Dex takes as a chance to push further. Their knees brush between them, hesitating momentarily before interlocking so that they can get even closer. Dex’s tongue glides along Nursey’s bottom lip, tasting, easy. Nursey pushes back, tentative and then brighter, and it feels—it feels like an argument, the familiar kind where half the point of it is to enjoy the barbs the other can dig up. The other half, of course, is that they both know where it’s going in the end.

Nursey swallows, tangling his hands in Dex’s shirt even as he pulls back. “Dex. Dex, what’re we…”

He trails off as Dex nudges his nose along Nursey’s chin, up to the underside of his ear. The shiver starts in his fingertips and simmers out through his biceps, shoulders, down to the very core of his chest. It feels nothing like anxiety.

“I don’t know,” Dex whispers, kisses, into Nursey’s ear. “I don’t know.”

Nursey tightens his grip. “Okay.”

The kitchen counter stools have a limited surface area and teeter precariously the more Dex moves into his space. Nursey pushes at Dex’s hips until he starts to stand, hunching as he does to continue pressing his mouth into Nursey’s skin.

“Couch or—” Nursey breath hitches as Dex’s teeth scrape, dragging down. He tries again. “Couch or be—hh.” Dex reaches his collarbone, pressing kisses into divots and teeth into planes.

Dex nudges at Nursey’s feet with his toes in the direction of the bedroom, relieving Nursey from having to form the full question. They ought, really, to pull apart to get there, what with Nursey’s clumsiness, but their familiarity with the layout of their own apartment and Dex’s distracted nudges to keep Nursey from stumbling backwards into anything allow them to reach Nursey’s bedroom door without incident. Dex pushes Nursey softly through the doorway and Nursey kicks out a foot to shut the door behind them before tumbling back onto the foot of his bed.

Nursey only notices the hurricane in his chest as he gazes up at Dex above him. In the darkness he’s blurred at the edges, soft. Nursey fidgets between the desire to turn on the light and see him stark and wanting to feel him in this heightened, shadowed way. Before he can decide, Dex shrugs his shoulders so that his button-down falls from his body, revealing shoulders and biceps and elbows and forearms, leaving him in a thin white tank top and those too-tight work slacks.

Nursey inhales. “Dex,” he says, and releases the breath.

Dex steps forward, half a step even, and his knees hit the bed. He braces, heavy, close, on Nursey’s shoulders as he lowers himself down, down, until the backs of his thighs brush the tops of Nursey’s. Nursey reaches up and clings on, finding the lines below Dex’s hips and catching his fingers in them.

Their mouths linger a breath away. Nursey wants to lean up, tilt his head back, let Dex take. He wants to pull Dex closer in atomized increments, wants to savor the seconds before their mouths catch. He wants to tuck his nose against the cotton of Dex’s undershirt and not come up for air until every last fizz of anxiety has chased itself from his body.

Nursey hates decisions.

Dex slides his hands down Nursey’s arms, slowing where t-shirt gives way to skin and skittering to a stop at his elbows. Dex’s fingers dance, prod, cup there, both hesitant and natural, tender and painful.

Nursey surges up and misses, open mouthed against the corner of Dex’s lips, and he’s embarrassed, aching, at his own eagerness until he feels the slow stretch of a smile against him. The taste of that—of growing joy—makes Nursey laugh, falling back against bedsheets and taking Dex with him. Bracketed by arms, thick with muscle and freckle spattered, arms that have encircled him in cellies, in heartbreak, in all of Nursey’s favorite moments over the past eight years, Nursey has the strangest urge to be held, mingling with the spicier, more overpowering urge to be undone.

He pushes his hands under cotton to scratch at pale white skin. He wants to put his mouth to it, _has_ wanted to put his mouth to that exact spot endless times over the years, on beach days at college and after, and that time when their heater wouldn’t shut off in the middle of January and they boiled as it snowed outside the window, and early mornings softened by showers, water drops bisecting belly-buttons, enticing but also lovely, charming, _home_.

Dex kisses him again before Nursey can say something with a tied-up tongue and he eases into it, already comfortable in the movements. It’s like the opposite of mourning someone you never really knew, it’s like greeting a stranger and already knowing their favorite song. Dex is _here_, and Nursey has known him for so long but now he’s _here_, he’s between Nursey’s mouth and hands and spread across the most vulnerable bits of Nursey’s body and the ache of trust in every touch is nearly as shattering as the touches themselves.

Their kiss is worn paths at the supermarket and coming home routines that never deviate and switching shifts to keep a house a home, and somewhere within the comfort, clothes come off. Tentative, and then not, hands press down sides and scratch against skin. Dex mouths along Nursey’s throat, hot, and Nursey tangles his hands and nose in too-long hair. It smells like their shared shower, like empty shampoo bottles and forgetfulness and _just use mine_ and heady, forbidden bliss but now it’s not forbidden, it’s just heady and _his_.

“Dex,” Nursey sighs.

“I know,” Dex drags against his skin, “I know.”

Dex drifts, down and over and distracted. Nursey’s skin alights. He thinks he knows now how it must feel to be anointed. He tries to wrap lines of poetry around Dex’s wrist, catches it in his hand and presses his lips to it. He only notices that Dex has ceased his drifting when his stare burns and their eyes meet and Dex presses the pad of his thumb against the flat of Nursey’s tongue.

Nursey knows the next step without thinking. He hollows his mouth around what he is given and rejoices in the crumpled groan Dex offers in response. _I love you_, Nursey thinks, drags his tongue through the syllables around callused flesh.

Dex replaces his thumb with his tongue and scrabbles, half desperate, at Nursey’s jeans. It is strange to feel Dex coming apart, dropping poise for purpose. He has never been chill—neither of them has—but there was always a surety, a restraint, in Dex. He was contained until he broke apart and then he repaired himself in silence, until even that he allowed Nursey to see, allowed Nursey to help. And now Nursey holds him as he shakes with something bright, something divine.

The thought makes him pause, as Dex wiggles his fingers beneath the waist of his jeans and tugs. Nursey always knew the potential in Dex’s hands, the way they could take Nursey apart with whatever amount of care they desired and Nursey would delight in each piece. But here, tangled, careless, Nursey only now understands his own ability to do the same.

Drunk on that possibility, more than wine, when his jeans fall into a soft heap against the floor and Dex returns to put mouth to new skin, Nursey turns them over. Dex lets out a soft huff, catching his hands on the side of Nursey’s head and neck. Nursey waits for the admonishment, the question at least, but Dex makes a sound like a laugh and curls closer. Nursey presses his unmanageable smile into skin, knowing that Dex can feel it and not minding it, in the moment.

Nursey has spent years daydreaming about undoing the button on Dex’s stupid tight work pants, pulling the belt through the loops in a slow, slick slide. His fingers itch to make it real and he curls them into fists. _Savor_, he thinks, as his tendons scream, _just a little longer_.

Unavoidable, he drops first to where fabric gives way to skin. Dex has freckles even here, pale and clustered in the moonlight. Nursey bites the biggest group he sees and sighs at the choked off noise above him. Dex presses tighter to his neck, encouraging but unhurried, and Nursey takes his time. These paths are unfamiliar, at least to touch, and he meanders through them, not so much cataloguing as enjoying.

“Four years,” Nursey says, wet, against a tensed abdominal, “since we played NCAA and you’re still ripped.”

The laugh rumbles against Nursey’s mouth, dizzying. “Gotta stay—” He inhales sharply, as Nursey nips. “—stay fit to carry all your bullshit.”

“S’funny,” Nursey smirks into Dex’s sternum. “’Cause I’m pretty sure your bullshit keeps you fit enough for the both of us.”

Dex tugs at Nursey’s ear until he stops, chin pillowed pointily on Dex’s chest. Dex smiles, softer than his tone. “Long as you like what you see, why’re you complaining?”

Nursey grins, stupid with it. “Who’s complaining?” he says and surges up to swallow Dex’s retort. He somehow manages to put it in the kiss, just sharp enough for snark but darting, playful, with the laughter that always softens the blow.

Dex is breathless when he finally pulls away enough to speak. Annoyed at stopping, Nursey turns his attention downwards, pushing to find the cluster of freckles on Dex’s shoulder that’s taunted him since Hazeapalooza.

“Nursey. Ah—” Dex giggles, sharp and unexpected, as Nursey’s nose brushes a tender spot high inside his arm, and it’s such a lovely sound that Nursey has to pull away to smile. “Nursey.” Dex, settled, nudges Nursey until he turns to look at him.

The air in Nursey’s chests just, like, nopes out at the sight of Dex. Rumpled and flushed against Nursey’s pillows, his hair fluffy and all over the place, his lips pink for all kinds of reasons.

“I want—” Dex’s fingers flex against Nursey’s neck, the moonlight highlighting the way his flush deepens. “Can I…”

Nursey watches the struggle in Dex’s features and hates it. “Anything,” he says, and the only reason that the intensity with which he means the sentiment does not scare him is that he has lived with this ache for a very long time.

Dex swallows, throat bobbing under Nursey’s fingers, braced at Dex’s throat. Slow, so slow, like melted sugar from a hot pan as Nursey sits at the counter watching Dex make meringues, Dex guides Nursey back against the bed, hands lingering wherever they touch. Once settled, he moves down Nursey’s body just close enough for his breath to stir up goosebumps along Nursey’s chest, abs, hips, and—oh.

Dex stutters his hands at Nursey’s waist in question and Nursey, reflexively, lifts his hips. And then Dex’s fingertips dip under briefs to brush against shuddering skin and with a smooth pull and minor tangle at the ankles Nursey is bare beneath him.

Vaguely, Nursey thinks he ought to feel vulnerable. Too open, uncomfortable, at least mildly. But even as Dex stares long enough to scald and the newness is suddenly stark against the familiarity of everything else, Nursey cannot help but feel safe. The way Dex’s thighs, still clothed, fit snug against the outside of Nursey’s spread knees, the interlocking of fingers and hip divots, the settling of sighing bodies against the blankets. It all just _fits_.

The realization is almost as intoxicating as Dex’s mouth, which dives, sure but soft, to meet naked, sensitive skin. Nursey cannot smother the moan that comes to his lips, and it only seems to provoke Dex further. His fingers twists into the bedsheets, pulling them taut as he rolls up, towards wet and heat and _Dex_. Dex smooths his palm up from the join of Nursey’s thigh, mellowing, and sits heavy, finally, low on Nursey’s stomach.

Of course Dex is good with his mouth. Nursey laughs and it turns into a groan. Dex has always been quick tongued, creative despite his self-proclaimed literary aversions. To feel it, this facet of Dex, as a physical, blood-singing thing is bleary, delightful.

The moon is full, round with shimmering stardust, and it casts the room in a paler glow. When Nursey, foolishly, looks down, Dex’s hair is a mystical thing, mussed and fiery and uncontained. Nursey intoxicates himself with the thought that he did that and cannot resist the temptation to touch. He brushes against the base of Dex’s skull, unsure until Dex reaches up and pushes Nursey’s hand the rest of the way. It’s ridiculous, it’s just hair, but it’s Dex, the giant crazy ginger that he is, and the feel of it, tangling knuckles around it and scratching into Dex’s scalp as his head moves beneath Nursey’s fingertips, the feel of it unearths a whimper from deep within Nursey’s chest.

Dex breaks, pausing, breathing harshly against secret sensitive skin, and Nursey finds himself petting absentmindedly, first at Dex’s temple, then drifting down to his ear. It’s warm, burning, beneath his hand, such an odd kind of skin. He curls his pointer and middle fingers under the ridge of it and marvels at the thought that it’s a place that he has never touched before.

As quick as he paused, Dex resumes, and Nursey is overcome with the impermanence of _new_ and how it will never be such again, but also the dizzy wonder of all that follows such a thing. He and Dex will always have worked this way from this night on. Like socked feet under heavy thighs and holding each other up in drunkenness and laughter and grief and knowing how the other will respond to a poke in the side or a nudge of the knee, like how they fit in every other piece, they will always fit this way, too.

_We fit_, Nursey smiles, maybe says, but it gets lost in the moan, the broken way he says Dex’s name—and _that_, the fact that after eight some-odd years of nicknames Nursey has still managed to find something to call Dex that tastes foreign and lovely on his tongue, that has him shaking apart the last, final bit.

When Dex’s mouth meets his once again, there is the insistence of before, but it feels softer against Nursey’s slowly buzzing skin. “Dex,” he says, into the pressing mouth, “what can I—”

“Whatever. What—anything.” Dex drags wetly against Nursey’s mouth, sliding to pant into the hollow of his cheek. He ruts, base and unstoppable, into the curve of Nursey’s hip and Nursey realizes that he never pulled Dex out of those damned work pants the way he wanted to. But he seems too fraught now, for the slow leather glide and the unwrapping, and so Nursey promises—prays—there will be another chance and crudely works his way into the slacks.

Dex shudders, uncaring, thumbs brushing against Nursey’s ribcage, and as Nursey works, tries his best to make it perfect—impossible expectations for himself, even in this—he focuses so intently that he hardly realizes that Dex is talking until his mouth catches on Nursey’s jaw on the words, “_So good_, baby, so good.”

And there’s more than that, there’s, “Oh, wow,” and, “I wanted—I knew—I—_hnn_,” and all sorts of things that set Nursey’s overstimulated body shivering, but the encouragement, the unexpected and electrifying endearment, the way Dex has given himself over so fully, Nursey can feel himself—soul, body, heart—settling into the comfort of this without question. _Whatever happens_, it whispers, _he will be there_.

When Dex comes, he grips Nursey tight enough to ache and whispers Nursey’s name on a loop Nursey could be lulled to sleep with. The air, bed, skin between them is sticky with sweat and other things, thick but unencumbered. Dex presses a non-kiss to the top of Nursey’s jaw and turns to let his body fall back against the bed.

Nursey wrinkles his nose. “I’m sure that you’re a huge cuddler—” he starts, only for Dex to cut in, with a snort,

“You definitely are, too.”

Nursey continues, louder, grinning at the ceiling, “—but I’m gonna need a serious shower before anything else happens.”

Dex sighs, and Nursey recognizes it simply. It’s the sigh that appeared senior year, when Dex would roll his eyes at the ridiculous plays Nursey would suggest and send the waffles out to run them regardless. It’s the sigh that says, _you’re ridiculous, I trust you_, it’s a sigh that coats Nursey like a warm glaze, pleasant.

“Come on, then,” Dex says, heaving up to standing with an absolute dad noise, which Nursey just has to point out as he follows, and Dex rolls his eyes—Nursey can tell, even if Dex doesn’t turn before walking out the door. Nursey’s further chirp gets caught on his teeth when he hears the sound of fabric hitting the floor.

_Oh shit_, he thinks, wheezing, and then scrambles out of the bedroom.

*~*~*

_Five months before tonight_

Over brunch, Mom pulled a mimosa from her lips and said, casual as anything, “So are you sleeping with Will yet?”

Nursey choked on what was previously a very delicious omelet. “_Mom_,” he said, wheezing, and their waiter hesitated in the area, looking troubled. Nursey coughed until his throat stopped burning, even if his delicate sanity was still scalded.

Mom watched on with a mild detachment. “So?” she asked when Nursey calmed himself.

“_No_, and I’m not—we’re _friends_, Mother.”

“Hmm.” Mom picked delicately at her crepes. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Mom.”

Mom looked up from her plate and the expression on Nursey’s face must have been especially pitiful because she sighed, dabbing the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “Honey. I don’t say this merely to upset you,” she said, which did not mean that she didn’t say it a little to upset him. “We’re worried about you.”

“You’ve all been talking about it?” Nursey whined, shoving egg in his face.

Mom pursed her lips but did not chastise him for the whining or the shoving. It only deflated Nursey further, as he must’ve been very pathetic for her to ignore such ill-mannered behavior. “We’re your parents, of course we talk about you.” She set her knife and fork down on her napkin and folded her hands together on the table. “Especially when you spend the week that Will is gone moping about the apartment all alone.”

“I went to the grocery store,” Nursey said weakly.

Mom reached out to pat at his forearm. “Derek, we understand that this is difficult, but we don’t want you to spend the rest of your life pining. We want you to be happy.”

Nursey let his fork clatter against his plate in protest. “I _am_ happy.”

“You can be happy in friendship without devoting your whole life to him, honey.”

“I don’t—” Nursey swallowed his argument. Not only was it a difficult case to make, that he was not devoting his entire life to Dex, but arguing with Mom was almost always futile. If she wasn’t right—which happened rarely—then she would make you feel like you were wrong for questioning her in the first place, and it always just made Nursey feel vaguely inadequate. “Why can’t I?” he said instead. “Dad devoted his life to you and Mama and me.”

“Your father is not in love with me or your mother, nor does he have the desire to be in love with anyone, and we were all aware of the situation before entering into it.” Mom squeezed Nursey’s arm, kindness pointed in her expression. “Honey, what happens when Will starts a relationship with someone? What happens when he wants to move out and start a family?”

“I—” Nursey bit his tongue. He didn’t know the answer to that.

Mom let go of Nursey’s arm to pick up her utensils once again, which meant the conversation was ending. “I’m not saying you have to move out tomorrow, dear, but I don’t want you to be blindsided when things change. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

Nursey muffled his _I think that train has already left the station_ into his mimosa. Mom coolly switched topics to one of her new interns that she found promising and Nursey half-listened while mulling mopishly over the state of affairs that was his life.

No clear solution presented itself, despite Mom’s matter-of-fact way of describing it. Getting over Dex didn’t seem likely, since he’d been some kind of attracted to him since they met and hopelessly in love for at least five years. Moving out was too drastic, and the thought of it was too upsetting to stomach when so many of the good things in Nursey’s life had to do with Dex. _Telling_ Dex was also certainly out of the question.

Over the years, he’d cycled through various emotions towards the idea of telling Dex about his feelings. At first he’d been adamantly against it under the assertion that he wasn’t good enough for Dex. Too anxious, flighty, imperfect. It took a few years for him to become secure enough in himself to recognize that he was, in fact, good enough for Dex. Then, well, something had happened—Nursey couldn’t remember it now—but the prospect of telling Dex seemed like a good idea. Maybe Dex would respond well to it, want to try something out. For a while, even, Nursey danced with the idea that Dex liked him, too. Loved, even.

But even then, there was never a right time, he could never get up the nerve to actually tell Dex, and the more he avoided it the more he thought about it, and soon his feeling towards the idea changed again. If Dex wanted anything to happen, Nursey reasoned, surely he would have said something by then. And, later, when their friends tried to convince him that such a thing wasn’t true, Nursey pushed it further. Even if Dex loved him, even if he wanted to try something, there must be a reason why they hadn’t as of yet. Maybe they’re better off the way they are and they both know it. Maybe this is the best they can have, and Nursey decided that he could be happy if that was the case.

But, as Mom continued on about her new favorite intern and Nursey vaguely wondered if getting drunk at 11:00 A.M. on a Sunday was still acceptable at 26, he realized that they’d never sat down and talked that out. Never said, _this is what I want for as long as it works_. There was no constant, no conversation, to tie them to this partnership thing they were doing and, suddenly, mimosa-soaked and wilting, Nursey was terrified of it falling apart.

*~*~*

_Tonight, still_

Nursey realizes quickly that the shower is much smaller than he thought it was.

Maneuvering in the sparse tub space is sudsy and giggle-tinged. Wet skin slides surprisingly over bits, intimate and funny for odd, inexplicable reasons. To make room, one of them has to stand somewhat outside the spray, cold and dripping, and despite how it saves space, neither of them can seem to bear seeing the other shiver like that, and so they quickly, tacitly agree that squishing under the showerhead is a necessity. Nursey reaches for conditioner as Dex bends to rinse his hair and Nursey ends up swallowing soap. Dex laughs and kisses him in apology until both of their tongues are wincing under the bitter chemicals. Nursey, trying to limit the extension of flailing limbs, scoops half of Dex’s bodywash from his cupped hand to clean himself with and Dex retaliates for the thievery by blowing bubbles into Nursey’s face.

“You’re a nuisance,” Nursey says, breathless, pinning Dex against the tiles just to keep him out of the way.

“You love it,” Dex says, grinning, silly, and Nursey swallows around the truth of his reply and kisses Dex to get him to stop looking so smug.

The wine has all but left his system by now but Nursey is still drunk on having Dex so solid and warm and wriggly under his hands. It wasn’t his loss, not really, but these past two months have felt like drifting, like waiting for the next tragedy to happen. He thought it was just him, moving through the motions in the hopes that banality wouldn’t be exciting enough to stifle, but with the way Dex clings back, the way his mouth moves greedily against Nursey’s, it feels like they’re both rediscovering what it means to enjoy while taking comfort in the reality of the other’s skin.

At least, that’s what Nursey gets from the way they touch. This is a yet undiscovered language, and what Nursey knows of Dex’s speech and expressions only translates so much. That, too, is a heady thing, all the new knowledge to collect.

The only thing that twinges, sharp and short at the back of his mind, is how much time he gets to learn. Maybe he could stomach being a one-night comfort, if he had to, but the thought of it dulls the moonlight brightness in his chest.

“We’re gonna prune if we stay here any longer,” Dex says, syrup sweet and slow against Nursey’s mouth.

Nursey sighs deeply. “I suppose.”

“‘Suppose,’” Dex repeats, lightly mocking. “Weirdo.”

Nursey bites back his own _You love it_, worried at the answer. He turns off the faucet and they emerge from the steamy shower.

Once toweled and dry, they return to their own rooms for pajamas. Nursey retrieves an old pair of plaid Samwell bottoms and glances at his sex mussed bed. The thought of crawling back in there at all, let alone by himself, is unappealing, and he’s wondering if he can extend the comfort for a bit longer when Dex appears at the door in a pair of big dumb boxers and a t-shirt that used to be Nursey’s, years ago.

He smiles at Nursey with softly raised eyebrows. “You coming?”

Nursey swallows the unbidden _please_ that rises to his lips. “Yeah,” he says, and trails Dex to his bedroom.

Twin beds are only so large but after the shower Dex’s feels rather spacious. Nursey collapses on the far side, the one furthest from Ellie’s empty crib. The knowledge of her absence hasn’t exactly faded, but the ache along with it ebbed, some, with his mind on other things. Any tangle that intends to complicate his chest, now, though, is quickly abated by Dex, curling up behind him.

They have shared many a bed, cuddled an endless number of times, but Nursey can’t remember if they’ve ever actually spooned. In the vaguely chilly apartment, skin not quite dry yet, the warmth of Dex’s body, encircling, is welcome and fuzzy. His arm is heavy over Nursey’s hip, awkward for a minute before Nursey shifts it up an inch and it all settles nicely. Nursey pushes himself back, the knobs of his spine fitting into the spaces between Dex’s ribs, and it’s all very manageably lovely until Dex’s nose finds its way under Nursey’s jawline.

“Goodnight,” Dex says, quiet, into the skin there. Nursey never thought of such as place as intimate, but even with all that has happened tonight to allow Dex to take up residence in this fleshy, tender part of him takes a shuddering amount of trust, it seems.

“Goodnight,” Nursey says, into too-thick air, and wonders if Dex can hear the _I love you_ he smothers on his tongue.

*~*~*

_Three and a half years before tonight_

“How do you write a poem?”

Nursey looked up from his latest leather-bound notebook to see Dex staring at him from over the lip of his laptop. His headphones were still in, but one was dangling over the top of his ear rather than tucked into it. He looked muffled and soft under all the blankets and that, paired with the way Nursey could feel Dex’s shin up against his thigh underneath the tangle of fabric, had Nursey wriggling in place.

He scratched at his nose. “What do you mean?”

Dex shifted, pulling his laptop higher up so it sat on his stomach, obscuring his face somewhat. “How do you decide to write one, I mean. How do you pick what words you use?”

Nursey glanced briefly down at the poem he’d been scribbling. _If I could write my name over every piece of you that has crumpled my heart, the tender insides of your elbow, the bloody grin of your scarred knuckles, the roof of your mouth where you smother your unbidden laughs, would smear with misspent ink. I long to know a love beyond possession. _Nursey frowned.

Avoidance was probably the best option. “What’s with the sudden interest in literature, Poindoodle?”

Dex, unfortunately, played hockey with Nursey too long not to notice his dodges. He nudged Nursey in the hip with his foot. “Humor me,” he said.

Nursey huffed. Dex looked somewhat pitiful, sitting there with the beginnings of an illness apparent in his too-red features, slightly nasal voice. It was unfortunately true that Nursey had trouble telling Dex no in the best of times. This was a lost cause from the start.

“I don’t know,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “Sometimes it’s something I see, I get inspired. Sometimes I just have, like, emotions or whatever.”

“Emotions or whatever,” Dex muttered, reflexive almost, and quiet like he tried to smother it before it came out.

“Hey.” Nursey poked the lump of Dex’s foot under the blankets. “You asked for this, no mocking my answer.”

Dex held his hands up in surrender, sickness muddling his smugness to manageable levels.

Nursey narrowed his eyes, hesitating to make sure that Dex was feigning the appropriate level of remorse, before continuing. “It isn’t, like, conscious a lot of the time. Words just come and I’m like, _oh yeah, that’s how I feel_.”

Dex tilted his head, leaning into the back of the couch. “Yeah?”

Nursey shrugged, itchy at Dex’s gaze. “Yeah, I mean, it takes effort, but when I’m in the right mood I already know what I want to say before I write it.”

Dex hummed. “Do you ever surprise yourself, then?”

Nursey brushed his thumb against rough paper, smiling without realizing it for a moment. “Usually my favorite lines are ones like that,” he admitted, remembering times when he wrote something and then sat back and thought, _whoa. I did that._ It didn’t happen incredibly often, but when it did it felt like starlight in his chest, in his fingertips.

Dex’s voice cleared through the haze of reveling. “Remember any?”

Nursey looked up. “What?”

“Remember any of your favorite lines?” Dex clarified, eyes strangely clear for someone meant to be sick.

“Oh, no. I’m not a spoken word poet, I don’t have to memorize them.”

“That’s a lie.” Dex’s smile was tired, pleased. If Nursey wasn’t so unbelievably warm on the couch, under every blanket they owned, tangled with Dex’s body, he might have shivered at the sight of such a thing. “Come on,” Dex said, nudging with his toes, “tell me some.”

“Oh, I don’t—”

“Nursey.”

“_Fine_, fine. Okay. Um.” Nursey tried to think of one that wasn’t obviously Dex-inspired. Dex might’ve been dense about poetry but he wasn’t actually dense. “Um, _candlelight carry ons and mismatched socks do not, necessarily, mean true love_.”

Nursey thought that would be enough, by the triumph in Dex’s responding grin, but then he went and leaned back into the cushion further, smile turning content, as if waiting for the rest of the story to be told.

Nursey looked at his notebook and tried to think of more. He’d scribbled something that may have been a flower in the corner of the previous page, and he stared at it, focused. “_Sunsets are a bloody thing,_” he said, “_which is to say that they are beautiful_.”

Nursey wasn’t looking at Dex but he could feel the burn of his eyes and now, suddenly, ridiculously, if he stopped reciting poetry, he would have to meet Dex’s eyes with the heaviness of having done so already, and so the only course seemed to be straight ahead.

He hurried the next line onto his tongue. “_If I dared_,” he started, stuttering when he remembered the end of it but he was already in it and the only way out was through, “_If I dared you to kiss me would you taste of relief?_”

Dex sighed, deep and mildly congested. Nursey chanced a glance upwards to find Dex falling into the cushions even further, eyes closed. Nursey twitched his hands against the notebook, probably folding the top corner of the page irreparably. Even Dex’s eyelids had freckles on them. Pale, faded, but there.

“_When they find our ruins_,” Nursey said, quiet, dragging against his teeth, “_I want them to know how we loved_.”

Freckles fluttered. Dex’s eyes seemed to smile, even without his lips. “I like that one,” he said.

Nursey couldn’t pull his voice from a whisper. “Me, too.”

Dex stared for a moment or two. In the yellow lamplit living room, his eyes were a paler color than usual, melty almost. Unfinished poems came to mind, looking at them, and the pen in Nursey’s hand ached.

Dex squinted a little, like he was smiling, or confused. “You write about stuff around you?” he asked.

Nursey pressed his tongue to the backs of his front teeth. “Sometimes,” he said, hissing almost on the _s_.

Dex’s eyes slid closed once again, eyelashes curled over his cheeks. Chirping, sleepy, he asked, “Ever write anything about me?”

Nursey’s heart laughed, a self-deprecating rhythm. “Oh,” he said, tongue recoiling under the weight of honesty, “all the time.”

Dex began to drift to sleep then. The freckles on his eyelids could not distinguish sarcasm from truth.

_If your sleeping body could hear_, Nursey wrote, _oh how my love would scream._

*~*~*

_ <strike>Tomorrow</strike> _ _ Today_

Waking up is, on this morning, a vaguely familiar annoyance.

It has been months since Nursey woke up for a trivial thing, which is to say did not wake up at all. The motions of turning and burrowing further into the warmth below him, around him, are dulled but still instinct. Two months does not discount twenty-odd years of practice.

Turning proves difficult, however, because heavy lines of limbs fall across his body, one bent across his chest and another bracketing his knees. A palm, callused, sits upon his sternum, lifting with each breath. A nose presses into the base of his neck, accompanying hair tickling his chin.

Nursey takes stock of his own limbs. He finds one arm free to maneuver. The other is wrapped around a back, forearm hot against a stretch of skin where the shirt has been pushed up in sleep. Nursey’s hand, he is embarrassed to realize, is delicately cupping an ass.

Nursey opens his eyes.

_Dex_, his brain screams, unhelpful. _Dex’s ass_, it adds, in much the same vein.

Last night—it probably should be at least a little foggy, what with all the wine he drank, but he can remember it all starkly, down to the baby hairs on the back of Dex’s fingers and the pink scar across his shoulder that Nursey never knew was there before and the look on his face when Nursey curled his hand just so—

_Knock knock knock_.

Oh, right. The trivial thing that woke him up.

More knocking. Then, Dad’s voice, “Hello?”

Shit. _Ellie_.

“Dex.” Nursey pokes rather pointedly at Dex’s shoulder. “Dex, I have to get up.”

Dex hums into Nursey’s skin, which, _oh_, if the question was something that could keep Nursey in bed in any situation other than this one than the answer would be what is _that_ for five fucking hundred, Alex.

“Dex,” Nursey wheezes, “it’s Ellie.”

Dex raises his head, smacking his lips together. His early morning frown is more adorable than anything ought to be. “Ellie?”

“Hello?” Dad calls from the front door again.

Dex’s eyes widen. “Ellie.”

“_Yeah_.”

Fortunately for the situation (unfortunately for Nursey’s ridiculous heart) Dex then disentangles himself from Nursey, and there’s no time to appreciate the creeping strawberry ice cream pink flush on Dex’s face because Ellie is home and Nursey needs to see her like yesterday.

He scrambles out of bed, Dex following close on his heels. Wrenching open the door reveals Dad, one hand poised to knock with a baby bag over that shoulder and Ellie, in her carrier, held by the other.

“Oh.” Dad smiles, pleasant. “Good morning.”

“I’m so sorry,” Nursey says, over Dex’s similar apologies. “I meant to set an alarm and I just—”

Dad waves off Nursey’s words, making his way into the apartment around the two of them. “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “If I had a baby in the house, I doubt I would have a regular alarm either. Ellie girl got us all up bright and early this morning, so I had time to drop her off before work,” he says, laughing amiably. He approaches the kitchen counter, hefting a drifting Ellie onto it with a soft movement. He puts the baby bag next to her and says, “We were just glad that you two spent your night off catching up on sleep.”

Dad turns around. His regular smile pauses on his face, eyes drifting downward as his eyebrows shoot up.

“Or catching up on… other things.” His regular smile pulls into a smirk.

Nursey scrunches up his forehead, confused, until he follows Dad’s gaze down to his own bare chest, littered in several places with red, smudged marks.

He blinks. “Fuck.”

Dad laughs with all the amusement an ace father stumbling upon his son’s sexual encounter with his years-long best friend and roommate can muster. Which is to say, a whole heck of a lot of amusement. “Don’t be using that language around Ellie now that she’s talking,” he says, because _that’s_ the important part of this conversation.

“Bad words are arbitrary,” Nursey says, weakly, eyes caught on a particularly intense mark very low on his stomach.

Dad walks over a few steps and claps Nursey on the shoulder. “Whatever you say, kid.”

Nursey looks up, can feel how wide his eyes are. Dad’s glee softens on his face.

“You’ll be okay,” he says, quiet, in the same tone of voice he used when he dropped Nursey off at kindergarten, at Andover, and at Samwell. He was right two out of three times. Which isn’t bad, in the scheme of things.

Nursey swallows the panic coating his tongue and nods.

Louder, Dad says, “Well, I’ve got to be getting to work now, but I’m sure we’ll see you for dinner soon.” He presses a kiss to the side of Nursey’s head, gripping him tight at the shoulder.

Nursey inhales slowly, focuses on Ellie, sleeping away in her carrier. She’s drooling a little. Nursey’s chest tightens. Fuck, he missed her.

“Dex.” Dad nods, raising a hand in goodbye, and then leaves the apartment with no further fanfare.

Nursey stays standing where he is. He’s holding his breath, he realizes, and exhales. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for. Dex to say something, probably, but what would he even say? _Boy, that was awkward. Good luck explaining to your parents how we slept together once because of grief and shit, that’ll be a fun conversation_. Even Nursey’s anxiety can’t make that a plausible scenario.

Dex’s first reaction is, unsurprisingly, to wake up Ellie.

“Ellie girl,” he says, sweet, releasing her from the carrier. Ellie does not immediately start bawling, or make her grumpy face even, which is what she would typically do at being woken up so unceremoniously. Instead she emits a loud, “Baa!” and beats her small fists against Dex’s chest gleefully. “Oh, I missed you too,” Dex says, tucking his face against her head.

Ten minutes ago, he was doing the same to Nursey’s neck.

Nursey curls his hands into the fabric of his pajama pants. The anxiety, panic, builds in his chest, swelling until he can’t hear anything but the rushing in his head, and he tries to focus on the pajama pants. They’re loose on him, he’s lost muscle mass since college, but they also may have been Holster’s at one point and he was always at least a size bigger than Nursey. He focuses on the catch of the nubby fabric against his hands, but now he’s thinking about college.

Thinking about growing friendships and festering crushes and how Nursey has lived with this ache for so long that he thinks it’s a part of him now, in the way his anxiety has fused to the backs of each individual cell, in the way that _got your back_ will always be the strongest words he has inside him, in the way that loving Dex feels like it will always be the best thing he can do.

_I don’t want to go another eight years, four years, _whatever_, without talking about it_, Nursey thinks, swaying.

“Dex,” he says.

Dex turns at Nursey’s voice. A beat after, he looks up from Ellie with a smile, an expression full with relief and joy and—

“Dex. What—what are we doing?”

The joy wrinkles on Dex’s face, and Nursey hates it, hates that he did that, but he _has to know_.

Dex doesn’t—probably couldn’t, to Nursey—pretend like he doesn’t know what Nursey means. He curls his hands tighter around Ellie. His lips flutter, open and closed and— “Nursey, I.” He stops.

Nursey’s heartbeat screams. “I can live with the answer,” he lies, “whatever it is. Just—” His eyes catch on Ellie. His voice scratches at a whisper. “Just please don’t keep me away.”

“What?”

Nursey can’t focus well enough to understand the intricacies of Dex’s voice and he can’t tear his eyes away from Ellie long enough to check Dex’s face. “I’m—I’m scared, Dex, I—I can’t sleep because I’m terrified that you’ll be gone when I wake up, that you—you both.” He presses his fists tighter against his thighs. “You’ll disappear.”

“_Nursey_.”

Ellie squirms, discontented by Dex’s tone and maybe the tense way he’s holding her and Dex turns to put her back in her carrier and blocks her from Nursey’s view and his breath stutters in his throat, as if he’s learned to breathe only for her, and he _misses_ her, he does, he couldn’t live without—

“Nursey.”

Dex is in front of him, suddenly, hands up and hesitating in the air, and Nursey looks up long enough to see the wrinkles in his eyebrows and feel the aborted urge to smooth them out.

“Nursey, I don’t—” Dex licks his lips, starts again. “I thought you knew, I thought—” He shakes his head. “Whatever happens, whatever we—” He stops again and Nursey wants to shake him, force the words from his tongue, needs to _know_. “Ellie,” he finally says, slow, “is outside of all that. I—I couldn’t do this without you.”

Nursey flickers upwards. Dex’s eyes are wide, alight with the early morning sun. Orange. Honeyed.

Nursey’s heart stops.

“We need you. _I_ need you,” Dex continues, shaking his head like shattering glass, his lips curling into a small, wry turn, broken and grief tinged and painfully honest. “But if you wanted to go, I wouldn’t keep—”

“_No_.” Nursey swallows the forcefulness. “No, I want—I need to be—here.”

Dex’s lips fall, open, sighing. “Oh,” he says. Smiles. “Good.”

Nursey—he wants to kiss the smile and hold Dex’s outstretched hands and he wants, most of all, for Dex to say that’s okay.

And Dex must—he _must_ know at this point, after last night, after the last eight years, how Nursey feels. And with the surety, the words that keep Nursey here and with Dex and with Ellie with seemingly no conditions—if anything, Nursey knows that he and Dex love one another unconditionally, in whatever form they have—it smothers Nursey’s anxiety in his throat.

“I love you,” he says, louder than he would’ve thought himself able. “I love you, I love—I love everything about you and our life together and I—I don’t know if it’s the way you want me to, but—”

“Nursey—”

Nursey stumbles on, flooding. “I love you more than I thought I could love something and I’m—I’m terrified I’m going to lose you and words don’t seem to be enough for how scared I am and how—how happy I am, here in this stupid little apartment, and how much I—how much I love—”

Dex kisses the breath from Nursey’s lips and he realizes, belatedly, that he was working himself into a kind of panic attack with his confession, but Dex’s breathless kiss does not feel like a panic attack, and isn’t it stupid, that the only way an author of three books can describe a kiss is the opposite of a panic attack?

“We’re ridiculous,” Dex says, sighs, into Nursey’s mouth, and Nursey laughs like bubbling.

Ellie, responding, laughs too, and they pull back to watch her giggling over in her carrier, but still intertwined as their arms somehow wound around each other when neither of them were paying attention. Dex’s arm is stark, present, against the small of Nursey’s back, and Ellie is smiling like nothing in the world could ever hurt, and Nursey thinks, bleary with it, _this is all I could ever need_.

*~*~*

_A few months after today_

Nursey stands from the couch and asks, “Anyone need a refresher on their drink?”

Mama doesn’t appear to hear him, too busy talking with Mr. Poindexter about _literature_, but the remaining guests—Mom, Dad, and Mrs. Poindexter—all wave him off, gesturing with mostly full glasses. Nursey takes the escape gratefully, maneuvering around all the parental limbs—somehow managing not to drop his empty glass—to get to the kitchen. He opens the fridge to grab the rest of the orange juice and Dex slips behind him, close, to grab the buttermilk that sits next to it.

Dex presses his mouth behind Nursey’s jaw. “You look nice,” he says, blush hot against Nursey’s skin, “with a bow on your head.”

“It’s tradition,” Nursey says, grinning, unembarrassed. “If you want, I’ll put a bow on your special present.”

Nursey can feel Dex’s flat stare without looking as Dex pulls back, buttermilk in hand. “If there’s a bow on your dick later I’m not touching it.”

Nursey pouts, closing the fridge. “You’re no fun.”

Dex shakes his head, returning to the bowl where his pancake mix sits, the dry half. Nursey leans his hip against the counter, pouring himself another drink and watching Dex distractedly as he rechecks the recipe Nursey knows he has memorized. Dex in the kitchen is one of Nursey’s favorite things, especially when that Dex is wearing matching Christmas pajamas and still has the echoes of a pillow crease on the side of his face.

Ellie shrieks in the living room and Nursey turns to see Mrs. Poindexter tickling her, a bright smile on her face. It’s only because Dex has her eyes that he can see the dullness still in them, but the joy seems real, nonetheless.

Dex’s hand curls around Nursey’s wrist, pulling Nursey’s eyes from the living room while also stopping him from overflowing his glass with juice. Nursey grins and presses a quick kiss to Dex’s cheek.

“Thanks, babe,” he says, and revels in the soft flush that grows on Dex’s ears. “What would I do without you?”

Dex shakes his head, smiling into the batter. “Perish the thought.”

Nursey watches him, pleased at the funny expressions that he says whenever he spends time with his parents. Nursey reaches out and tucks his fingers into the hem of Dex’s pajama pants, just behind the antler of a bright red reindeer.

“I love you,” he says, sighing like sunshine.

Dex looks up with the expression he’s only had—only shown—since that night a few months back. From under his eyelashes his eyes sparkle, starlit, and his smile hides itself like a secret. It’s an expression that says, _I love you, too, you ridiculous person, you_, and it might just be Nursey’s favorite thing he’s ever read.

“Derek,” Mama calls, insistent, “come tell John that he’s wrong about Harry Potter.”

“Oh God,” Dex says, dawning horror, “they’ve moved on from the classics.”

Nursey grimaces. “I’ll go fix it.”

“Good luck,” Dex says as Nursey makes his way back over and, buzzing with the remnants of a smile, Nursey rejoins the rest of the family to be thoroughly chastised about a boy wizard.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Drop a comment or a kudos as both will be adored by the author (me) and I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing!  
If you have a Tumblr and would like help to share this fic with others, you can reblog it at [ this link ](https://likeshipsonthesea.tumblr.com/post/186731908020/the-kid-fic-is-here) and really help me out. Thanks!


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